Letters home

 Yesterday morning, I spent an hour or two reading the letters of a soldier written home to his mother. There were letters from his work before he enlisted, when he was a Forest Ranger in the White Mountains of Arizona. There were letters from Fort Bliss as he was processed in and eventually there were letters from Fort Bliss when he was processed out. There were letters from when he was training and letters when he was waiting to go overseas. There were letters about what he experienced behind the lines while he was overseas. (Discreetly, without place names.) There were letters when it was time to come home and then there was a letter asking, why serve?

Now there was time to ask that question; now there was time to think about it.

What was it all about? Why did we go? Was it just to prop up one economic interest against another? Was it to fight for freedom?

These questions asked by an American soldier in 1919 are still questions we need to ask today. These are questions we need to ask ourselves as we welcome home people who have served overseas. Why serve? Why did they go? Why did we expect them to? How shall we welcome them home? How shall we explain to them what it was all about?