66. Shared sacrifice

The term didn’t make the Oxford Dictionary’s most frequent list this year.

 

I was a little young to remember WW II as it happened; my earliest memory my Uncle Russell’s flag draped casket and a gun salute. Soon other uncles who’d survived the war came home. They didn’t talk about the war, but sometimes there’d be mild jabs about one service or another. Eventually I’d learn that my dad’s two brothers and two brothers-in-law were in Europe and North Africa; my mom’s brother Sid flew the Hump from India into China, and her brother Russell had been killed in the Pacific in the war’s last month when he was only 19. I knew too that my dad spent the war years in Utah putting radios in B-29s while my mom took up his job in the post office. The war touched everyone in our family. 

 

We learned in school or from adult talk about victory gardens and war bonds, but my first realization of sacrifice for war effort was when baseball hero Ted Williams got drafted in WW II and again for Korea—taking away prime years of a record-breaking career. Senators, Congressmen, and their sons all enlisted or were drafted during WWII and Korea. Things changed with and after Vietnam; in 1973 the military became all-volunteer.

 

Ironically, emphasis on volunteerism seems to have coincided with a nationwide move to libertarian economics, rapid growth in technology, and the huge concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent of Americans. Individualism grew—and the military, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, court run CASA, and church and university programs promoted volunteerism in serving the country and its hungry, poor, sick, and others in need.

 

There are splits and fragmentations in America—and even within the many geographical, religious, trade, business, and ethnic groups in the country. Individual cities, healthcare districts, states, and federal agencies each deal with their coronavirus. There was competition for ventilators and masks, and now intense jockeying for “carve-outs” to keep businesses, churches, and schools open.

 

The notion that we are all in this together seems as remote as WW II. Shared sacrifice is what healthcare workers do. Many of us—whether from fear or sense of duty—do follow recommendations, wear masks, distance, stay home. But many figure ways in which we are different; it’s someone else’s war.

 

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