A few years ago, I had determined that I wanted to read more literary classics. I had picked up a copy of Erich Marie Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front at a used bookstore. I started reading it around Memorial Day but didn’t really get into it until closer to July.
In my town on the Fourth of July, the town puts on a fireworks show at the fairgrounds and the local radio station plays thematic music to accompany. On this particular year, I was the only one in my family who wanted to see the fireworks. I parked in the local Kmart’s parking lot and plopped out my lawn chair. With about an hour until it would be dark enough to see the show, I pulled out the book and proceeded to finish it.
Now, if you haven’t read All Quiet on the Western Front, you should know a few things. For starters, it is a book that is set during World War I in a German army camp. The main characters are all teenagers who have been drafted and are on the fringes of battle. And throughout the book, it’s painfully obvious that these are teenage boys in the prime of their life.
I’ll try not to spoil the ending, but it doesn’t end well for these boys. And the conclusion is so utterly heartbreaking I was left in tears as the sun set behind me. And then the music started.
I’ve said before that country music is not my favorite genre. But there’s a particular brand of country that came out especially forcefully after 9/11. It’s the hyper-patriotic, “don’t mess with us or we’ll come over there and kill you” type. The Toby Keith “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” type of country song.
It was one of those songs that came blaring out of the speakers of a nearby car. Flashes of light burst overhead as the show began. But I couldn’t concentrate on it because my blood was absolutely boiling. Having just read a heartbreaking account of life in a war and young men dying in vain, I couldn’t stomach the glorification of war and military power. It was simply too much too soon.
And that feeling hasn’t gone away. So now, every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, or Veteran’s Day, I find myself repelled by the overt displays of hyper-patriotism and the songs that accompany them. And I think about those boys, those teenagers, who died in the trenches and on the battlefields.
