We've reached a phase now in our two foreign wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the initially crisp contours of human drama become hazier. It's an inevitable process, but no less tragic for its inevitability—and perhaps moreso.
At the outset of a war, the public eye often fastens on a particular hero or martyr who exemplifies The Cause. In 1861, that person was, for Northerners, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth. During the occupation of Alexandria, Ellsworth led a team into a local hotel, the Marshall House, whose owner, James Jackson, refused to take down the Confederate flag. During the brief confrontation inside Marshall House, Jackson shot and killed Ellsworth. In turn, Ellsworth's companions shot and bayoneted Jackson, who also died.
Ellsworth immediately became a sainted martyr to many in the North, the first Union officer to die in the war. Ellsworth iconography appeared in Union newspapers (an example shown to the write). His death became enough of a rallying cry in his home state, New York, that it inspired enough recruits to form the 44th New York Infantry regiment, nicknamed "Ellsworth's Avengers." President Lincoln had Ellsworth lie in state in the White House before his coffin traveled north to its final resting place in New York.
Only a year later, many Elmer Ellsworths fell in battle, on both sides of the war. None of them inspired the grief and outrage Ellsworth did, in large part because there were too many of them. The first officer killed was iconic; the tenth, or one hundredth, or one thousandth, was a statistic.
In the current wars, Pat Tillman became the heroic icon of "the first to fall." Tillman, who left behind a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the US Army, died in Afghanistan. Whether friendly or enemy fire killed him is largely immaterial to what made him an icon: he put himself in harms way when he didn't need to, sacrificing wealth and fame few ever achieve, out of simple patriotism.
In the national mind, Tillman's martyrdom was as clear a scene as Ellsworth's for Americans a century and a half earlier. So, too, have the other Tillmans become as difficult to picture with the same clarity as the other Ellsworths who died in the Civil War.
I'm sure the families of American soldiers (and, often forgotten, civilians) who died in Afghanistan and Iraq appreciate when news outlets honor their sacrifice by showing their picture, talking about their lives, and describing how those lives ended. I've yet to hear about an organization of widows and orphans of our current war dead rise up to complain about their depiction in the print and broadcast media. The argument that Ted Koppel reading the names of the fallen on Frontline, or newspapers like The Washington Post printing their pictures and bios, somehow undermines the war effort contradicts the earnest struggle to fight against the creeping haze of war memory. It's difficult to keep up with every casualty, to give each one the respect of reading about who they were, how they died, and why. Many try, and it's honorable to do so.
Great set of articles. I had no idea that Tillman had a precedent. Glad to see you're back on your feet, we all missed your writing.
Posted by: J. | 01/10/2005 at 04:47
Welcome back.
Posted by: Steven D | 01/10/2005 at 16:23