After Israel’s War of Independence, poet Nathan Alterman famously memorialized those who fell in that struggle in his poem “Magash Hakesef” – “The Silver Platter.”
The reference was to a statement by the country’s first president that no one was going to hand the Jews a state “on a silver platter.” In other words, it would have to be earned by sweat and blood.
Alterman’s poem speaks of a young girl and a boy “dressed in battle garb” and “bone weary from days and nights in the field.” The poet speaks of a nation “in tears” asking “who are you?” of the two.
The pair, symbols of the 6,000 who died in battle so that Israel and the Jewish people might live, reply: “We are the silver platter on which the Jews’ state was presented today.”
Throughout history, liberty has always been purchased at the price of the sacrifice of the young and the brave.
Due to the requirements of defending a country whose existence much of the world still refuses to accept, Israelis are subject to a draft that brings the majority of the nation’s youth into the army. But that’s not the case for Americans. For us, the draft is but a distant memory linked to the service of fathers and grandfathers.
As the world’s only superpower, we have gotten by with an all-volunteer military for more than 30 years. Military service is simply not something that most upper- and middle-class kids even consider when they leave high school.
Since 9/11 and the subsequent launch of the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has been common to speak of the United States as a nation at war. But though it is a war in which our survival is very much hanging in the balance, it’s hard to notice if you judge by the way almost all of us live our lives.
The people who do the fighting and the dying are largely strangers to the vast majority of Americans who go about their business each day with scarcely a thought about those who make our indifference possible.
But for a couple of days last month, I got a small taste of what life is like for some of the people in the military and learned a little about what makes some of them tick. In this case, it was a visit to the USS Harry S Truman, one of the most powerful battle systems in our nation’s arsenal, taking part in exercises in the Atlantic before the ship sets sail next month for the Persian Gulf.
Stepping out onto the deck of the Truman at sea is, for those of us accustomed to soft civilian lives, a visceral experience pretty much like landing on a different planet. The noise, both above and below decks, is deafening and constant. The hot jet exhaust, fuel lines, missiles and other realities of naval aviation provide a frightening obstacle course for the swarms of crew dressed in shirts of various colors (a different one for each of the various tasks involved in getting a plane aloft) who perform an elaborate nonstop action ballet in the course of performing their duties.
Powerful jet aircraft, including the navy’s top-of-the-line fighters, the F-18 Hornets and Super-Hornets, took off and landed constantly as the carrier “cycled” – practicing round-the-clock air missions just as they will be required to do in battle.
Flying and landing on a pitching deck in the middle of the ocean is a perilous occupation. Even putting aside the military objectives they will pursue once they are in position to aid American ground forces in Iraq, literally everything they do on such a ship is a matter of life and death.
The intense pressure to get their tasks right each and every time is enormous. Theirs is a mission that is unforgiving of even the most minor mistakes. The loss of one of their E-2 Hawkeye radar planes and the three aviators aboard in a nighttime takeoff a few weeks ago brought that truth home.
Who leaves the comforts of home to do such difficult work?
The majority of those aboard the Truman are kids. Most of the enlisted personnel are under 25; many are teenagers fresh out of high school. Most come from the lower end of the economic ladder. They seek money for college via the G.I. bill or technical skills that will lead to civilian jobs.