Like most people of a certain age, I remember exactly where I was on September 11th, 2001.
It was several weeks before my college classes were starting in the fall. I was mid-transition from the Moody Bible Institute to Columbia College Chicago, both in downtown Chicago. Soon I would move into a little apartment in the Logan Square area and enroll as a journalism major.
But on the day of the attacks I was at my childhood home in northern Michigan. We first heard about it on the radio and then watched the planes crash and the towers fall on a little television.
The day was bleak, cold, empty.
Later I drove to a nearby town and ate alone in a small restaurant, now closed. It was my first ever black bean and sweet potato burrito, still the best one I’ve ever had. The few customers in the restaurant whispered to one another, made knowing eye contact—“we’re all in this together now”—and watched a television that had been placed makeshift on the checkout counter.
Some people knew, immediately or soon after, that they had to enlist. A friend at Moody dropped out and joined the military the next year.
I didn’t consider it at the time, though in hindsight, given the chance to replay that season, I would have given it serious thought.
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My favorite books on war are those that take an honest, complicated look.
Here are several excellent novels that I’ve read recently.
From Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny is the beloved story of the courageous and the cowardly. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.
Wouk’s epic two-part saga, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, spans the build-up to the war, the whole arc of global conflict, fighting in Europe, the Pacific, the terror of the Holocaust, and home front dynamics. Pug and Pamela forever!
Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer, is a soaring book that follows one man’s career from the early nineteen teens all the way up to the early salvos of Vietnam. For many years it was required reading for West Point and Marine cadets.
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Today, Memorial Day, is a day of remembrance. We honor those servicemen and servicewomen who paid the ultimate price in the line of duty.
And also, perhaps, a chance to appreciate those still with us who served as well as those who have passed on from other causes. My great-grandfather, who served in The Great War, which ended the day he landed in France. Two grandfathers who served in the second world war. My cousin who served in Afghanistan. And beloved friends and others.
It often comes at a high cost: often with injury to the body, the mind, the soul. I’m tremendously grateful. Thank you.