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Almost overnight, 'their' war has become 'our' war

By Carl Heintze

Last week I learned my nephew, who is not yet 21, is on his way to Iraq. He's going because his unit of the California National Guard has been called to active duty again.

This is the second time the unit has been sent to Iraq. But it will be a first for my nephew and for our family--the first time anyone in my nephew's generation has gone off to war.

My nephew was not in his unit when it went the first time. He got where he is today because in high school he enlisted in the high school ROTC with the intention of becoming a Ranger.

I'm not sure what he knew about the Rangers, an elite part of the Army's combat troops, but I think he believed them to be more glamorous than the role he is more likely to fill in the months ahead.

He took basic training over two summers at Ft. Benning, Ga., got sent home and assigned to his hometown unit and then, when the unit got called up, reported to Camp Roberts for a physical examination and further processing.

But he is not going to be a Ranger, nor is there much likelihood that he is going to be one in the immediate future.

Instead he is going to be an infantry replacement, a role I also filled some 65 years ago. And although at least six decades have passed since I shouldered my M-1 rifle and started my exploration of the soils of western Europe, I have some idea of how he feels.

Scary, committed, busy and scared.

But I am not able to imagine much of what his mother or his grandmother are experiencing. Chris is an only son (he has a sister) and so far he is the only male in our family who is about to be committed to combat.

Like so many other families in the nation, until now we have borne only a minimal military burden. The war, after all, until recently has been fought not by a draft, but by our first all-volunteer, all professional army.

The burden of loss has been borne by this professional set of soldiers. We have no universal military conscription and we are unlikely to have one any time in the near future. For most of the families in the United States, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is more a topic for after dinner conversation than it is an immediate concern.

I know that's the way it has been for us.

Somehow the war for us has not been real. Rather, it has been abstract, something out there somewhere because, although we see it and its losses nightly on television, they aren't really ours.

Instead, for the longest time they belonged to those soldiers who enlisted like Chris in the National Guard, or in the reserves, or even less likely, in the Army itself.

If we don't know any professional soldiers, it has been hard for us to empathize with the families who have such members.

It is only when someone like Chris signs up and ships out that it comes home to us suddenly and shockingly that the war now is a part of our daily lives, too; no longer an abstraction, but instead a living human being at risk.

The names of unpronounceable places of that distant land of war will now become familiar to us--we may even learn to spell them, even as many of us did during the Vietnam War.

The daily body counts--so heavily weighted to Iraqis--now have new meaning and we dread the mention of the Americans who are being lost each week. Once they were names. Now we will wait with dread to see if we recognize Chris among them.

And, I think, the abstract talk around the dinner table and after supper which once only hinted at what was happening in Baghdad and beyond will become frighteningly real and important.

It's no longer their war. Instead, it has become ours.