BROOKINGS – “What has been will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 RSV

In the more than a decade since I have been writing stories for The Brookings Register’s annual Veterans Day special edition, there has been one constant every time we went to press: We, the people of the United States of America, are at war. And pretty much have been since 9/11.

As we at the Register prepared to get this year’s special edition to the printer, and as I struggled with an introduction to it, those above words of Ecclesiastes came to mind and seemed fitting. It’s not the first time I’ve turned to the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, as I struggled with what to say to accompany the stories of our Brookings area veterans.

And the headlines of my introductions, often accompanied by biblical quotations, took on a same-sounding approach: 2011, “Is there any end ahead for the ‘Long War’?”; 2014, “Has anything really changed?”; 2017, “Still a nation at war” (“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.” Matthew 24:6); and 2018, “No war to end all wars” (“ … and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, … neither shall they learn war anymore” Isaiah 2:4).

As I’ve noted above, there is a universal sameness to war experienced by all those who participate in it; yet at the same time there is an individual experience for all who participate in uniform. It’s the latter I especially tried to capture in the Veterans Day stories I penned. Whether I did or not, at this point that’s a moot point.

To tell our veterans’ stories, especially those who went in harm’s way, in 1,000 words or less accompanied by one or two pictures at most, was often a challenge. Those words often flowed out of interviews long or short with men and women, and sometimes their spouses and other family members.

I often fact-checked what I’d recorded, especially the stories of those who served during the Korean War and World War II; not that I didn’t trust those I interviewed, but bringing to mind wartime memories of 75 or more years ago and putting precise places and dates to them is no easy task.

Put it down, at the individual level, to what Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz called the “fog of war.” In fact, many of those older veterans were happy to steer me in the direction of fact-checking, which helped their own recollections of dates and places.

In a few instances the veterans I interviewed had kept diaries, collected memorabilia or taken photos of events they participated in – a first brush of history, so to speak.

One of those “historians” was Robert “Bob” Lees, then 17, who dropped out of Brookings High School just before Thanksgiving in 1943, joined the Navy and served until 1946.

He was stationed on the battleship USS New Mexico (BB-40) when on two separate occasions it was hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane. At the time of the second attack, the New Mexico was serving as the flagship of Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet. Both attacks produced multiple casualties.

Lees has memorabilia, photos of some of the high-ranking Navy officers who visited the flagship, and two wooden-airplane cutouts, each with a piece of metal from the wreckage of the two kamikaze aircraft.

After the war, Lees would earn his high school GED, use his GI Bill dollars and go on to South Dakota State University, and graduate with a degree in agricultural engineering.

For Lees and the other men and women like him who lived through the Great Depression, served in World War II and earned the right to be called the “Greatest Generation,” their war ended in victory and has been put behind them and the nation. For those who served in Korea and Vietnam, their war has ended – for better or worse – and been put behind them and us, the nation. (Technically the Korean War never really ended with the signing of a peace treaty. We’re still living with an armistice.) 

So where are we now in what seems to still be a nation at war? And where do we go next? Two questions way above my pay grade. But as I was finishing this introduction, I went online and asked if ISIS has been defeated.

I found a “22 hours ago” article from Military Times of interest: “Conan might want to cancel his White House plans, ISIS just named new leader.”

Conan is the military working dog who was injured helping bring about the demise of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But ISIS didn’t waste much time in naming Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi the “new caliph of the Islamic State” and “emir of the believers.”

And the ISIS mission continues.

Looks like our nation’s longest war might get longer.

Have a nice day.