"THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER"

“THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER”

According to historian David Blight, Memorial Day was started by formerly ensIaved African-Americans on May 1, 1865, just a few weeks after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  It happened in Charleston, SC, to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp.  They dug up the bodies over a two week period and buried them properly, with a processional of many thousands bringing flowers to honor the service of the soldiers in ending slavery.   

I served my country as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War from 1970-72.  My alternative service was a staff person (and later director) of Opportunity House in Nashville, a halfway house for men being released from prison.  It was here that I got my first glimpse of the horror that is the American prison-industrial complex.  It was quite an education for me, and ever since then I have been involved in ministry to those in prison in one form or another.  I’ll write more on that journey with the CO this fall when I remember my 50^th anniversary of starting it. 

Because of my CO status, Memorial Day is always complicated for me.  I honor the men and women who serve our country in the military.  My adopted father, Gay Wilmore, served in the US army in World War II.  In the midst of my ambivalence about Memorial Day and about nonviolence and the efficacy of violence in service of social justice, I want to give thanks to my father-in-law Herman Leach, to my father, to Charlie Callier, to Bob Wetzel, and to so many others who have served our country.   My mother’s almost fiancé, Bob Buford, was killed in WW II.  I was in seminary and gave up my deferred status in 1970 in order to try to start a movement with others to end deferments for ministers and seminary students.  I never felt that the Vietnam War was anything but a misguided attempt to kill and maim people of a different color.  In saying this, I do not intend to demean the Americans who served there – I had two friends killed in that war.  

It did make me understand that there is a war machine that loves to create chaos and death and profit.  That machine is obviously not confined to our country – Putin and Kim and Trump all seem cut from the same cloth, all war mongers who never served in the military, reminiscent of the leaders who sent us into the disastrous war in Iraq in 2003.   I also want to thank people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Vernon Dahmer, Elijah Lovejoy, John Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Malcolm X and so many others who have given their lives for our country, even on these shores.  Perhaps the best that I can do with this ambivalence is to turn back to Buffy St. Marie’s song, published in 1964.  She was born as a First nations Cree in Canada, and I remember her powerful writing and voice in bringing “Universal Soldier” to the consciousness of so many of us.  Check out her version online somewhere – here’s one with commentary  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way………

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers {sisters} can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war

            Let’s honor those who serve our countries, and let’s honor those who work for justice with equity.