June 28: The Korean War
There was a time when, whenever I thought about the Korean war, the
first thing that came to mind was MASH. I suppose that this is the curse
of being a member of Generation X. We had the luxury of growing up in a
time of innocence. I was never worried that the Russians could bomb us
at any second, though people of my parents' generation told me stories
of "practicing air raids" and about schoolteachers praying rosaries
while their students worked on their lessons.
Get a load of this... I was so clueless that I actually thought MASH was an unfunny sitcom from the 1970s. I didn't find it funny because it depressed me. It depressed me because it always seemed to be showing on the small black and white television my parents kept in the bedroom of our suburban home in southwest Calgary. I knew that sitcoms were supposed to be funny. Happy Days was funny because the Fonz was always telling people to "sit on it." MASH wasn't funny because MASH was about war. The opening credits weren't zany and there was no goofy upbeat music. Instead, it showed footage of military doctors running out to take the wounded off of helicopters. Over it played what sounded like a funeral dirge (the song is called suicide is painless.) Then there would be a commercial break and then Alan Alda and Jamie Farr would make jokes while they operated on people.
Not funny.
My mom told me that the TV show was MASH was inspired by a movie that was also called MASH, which was released three years before I was born. That also depressed me. I had no interest in watching MASH, the movie or the TV show, and neither did any of my friends, which I took to represent the entirety of Generation X. This was proof that nothing lasted forever, not even art, and that we would all die and then the day would come when no one even knew that we'd ever lived.
The irony, of course, was that this was what MASH was all about. The American soldier William Tecumseh Sherman is credited with saying that war is hell, but Robert Altman, who made the 1970 film, seemed determined to rebut that, or at least complement it, by saying that laughter may be the only comforting response in the presence of such hellfire.
As I said, MASH was what I used to think about when I thought about the Korean war. Now I think about a Korean war veteran I met in Bashaw, Alberta around Remembrance Day of 2002. The newspaper I'd worked for wanted me to interview a local war veteran and, sad to say, even then we were running out of WWI veterans. So I asked around and I learned about this guy who worked, part-time, as a substitute teacher. I met him at a Bashaw restaurant and I tried to interview him but I just couldn't get around to asking him war questions. I'm not sure if that was a failure on my part. Some veterans need to talk about the war, some don't. All he told me is that he didn't see much action and that the war was necessary because it was important to stop communism from taking over the world.
"The only way communism can really succeed is if everyone's a communist," he said. "Why do you think so many Russian hockey players defect to North America? So they can make money."
The Korean war veteran told me that he spent a lot of time reading - mostly books on ancient history. He wore a black shirt and blue jeans and he was bald but he had a black and white beard and he wore dark glasses. He chainsmoked.
The joke about MASH was that the series actually lasted longer than the Korean war, which lasted about three years.
The Korean war veteran told me that he had no regrets.
"At least Korea wasn't a meaningless war," he said. "In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers lost their lives for absolutely nothing."
I think I quoted him on that.
Get a load of this... I was so clueless that I actually thought MASH was an unfunny sitcom from the 1970s. I didn't find it funny because it depressed me. It depressed me because it always seemed to be showing on the small black and white television my parents kept in the bedroom of our suburban home in southwest Calgary. I knew that sitcoms were supposed to be funny. Happy Days was funny because the Fonz was always telling people to "sit on it." MASH wasn't funny because MASH was about war. The opening credits weren't zany and there was no goofy upbeat music. Instead, it showed footage of military doctors running out to take the wounded off of helicopters. Over it played what sounded like a funeral dirge (the song is called suicide is painless.) Then there would be a commercial break and then Alan Alda and Jamie Farr would make jokes while they operated on people.
Not funny.
My mom told me that the TV show was MASH was inspired by a movie that was also called MASH, which was released three years before I was born. That also depressed me. I had no interest in watching MASH, the movie or the TV show, and neither did any of my friends, which I took to represent the entirety of Generation X. This was proof that nothing lasted forever, not even art, and that we would all die and then the day would come when no one even knew that we'd ever lived.
The irony, of course, was that this was what MASH was all about. The American soldier William Tecumseh Sherman is credited with saying that war is hell, but Robert Altman, who made the 1970 film, seemed determined to rebut that, or at least complement it, by saying that laughter may be the only comforting response in the presence of such hellfire.
As I said, MASH was what I used to think about when I thought about the Korean war. Now I think about a Korean war veteran I met in Bashaw, Alberta around Remembrance Day of 2002. The newspaper I'd worked for wanted me to interview a local war veteran and, sad to say, even then we were running out of WWI veterans. So I asked around and I learned about this guy who worked, part-time, as a substitute teacher. I met him at a Bashaw restaurant and I tried to interview him but I just couldn't get around to asking him war questions. I'm not sure if that was a failure on my part. Some veterans need to talk about the war, some don't. All he told me is that he didn't see much action and that the war was necessary because it was important to stop communism from taking over the world.
"The only way communism can really succeed is if everyone's a communist," he said. "Why do you think so many Russian hockey players defect to North America? So they can make money."
The Korean war veteran told me that he spent a lot of time reading - mostly books on ancient history. He wore a black shirt and blue jeans and he was bald but he had a black and white beard and he wore dark glasses. He chainsmoked.
The joke about MASH was that the series actually lasted longer than the Korean war, which lasted about three years.
The Korean war veteran told me that he had no regrets.
"At least Korea wasn't a meaningless war," he said. "In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers lost their lives for absolutely nothing."
I think I quoted him on that.
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