The Lazy Scholar

Dear holiday lovers,

Growing up, I definitely didn’t take Veterans’ Day very seriously, except as a reason to sleep in. There were only two people in my family who ever saw a battle front—my Bronx-reared great-uncle, who was a paratrooper in the Pacific, and my Czech grandfather, who fought with the Russian army against the Nazis. The first died when I was five, and the other seldom spoke about his past. My mother, meanwhile, forbid my brother and me from playing with G.I. Joe action figures or even waterguns. So the military was pretty far from my mind as a child.

Since 2001, of course, it’s been fairly hard not to think about the military on a regular basis, whether you have a personal connection or not. And surely Veteran’s Day takes on a new meaning at a moment when America is waging war on two fronts. For today, then, I wanted to point you, dear readers, to the American Folklife Center’s (alas, not easy to navigate) Veterans History Project, which includes literally thousands of audio and video interviews with veterans from World War I to those of our present day. The 185 interviews with men and women back from Iraq and Afghanistan include soldiers such as Specialist Rosetta Tywanna Rainge Floyd from Oklahoma City; Specialist Bradley Keith Oxford from North Carolina; and Staff Sergeant Shawn Russell Stenberg, who shared the photograph below.

At the risk of sounding a cynical note on Veterans’ Day, I also feel compelled to point out a few of the commercials (and promises) that the Army has used to find new recruits. For one, check out this ad from the Reagan Era, complete with a rock song from what sounds like a Bruce Springsteen tribute band, “’cause freedom isn’t free.” Also, does anyone else vaguely remember this “Be All That You Can Be” ad from 1986? And just to round things out, here’s one from the recent Army Strong campaign. It’s nice to know that their production values have gone up, even if their recruitment standards have gone down. Who needs all those gay Arabic translators anyway?

Patriotically yours,

Stephen