Trego's Mountain Ear

On the morning of Memorial Day, I read a headline – “No Heroic Sacrifice Is Ever Wasted”.   I thought of Ukraine – a spot where the day before I was reading of drones being weaponized, where, according to the article, no one was safe from drones ten miles back from the front lines.  The article was describing Russian drones – but both sides have done a job of making drones lethal as hell.

I think back a dozen, maybe fifteen years.  A half-dozen or more of our grad students were housed in “the bullpen” – an old lounge from when the building was a dormitory.  Anton Mighty played with his tiny drone, running it to peer at computer screens over people’s shoulders – he was good with the thing.  He showed and described the future of drones.

My experimentation was ground-based.  I would, on occasion, run a remote controlled rat down the hallway and under someone’s desk.  It’s pretty much all a question of what people find amusing – and today I read of people who made our tools of jest into something long range and lethal.

I recall a story I heard at Sinte Gleska University – the story teller laid out a tale of Tom Custer’s conduct at the Little Big Horn.  A little background – Captain Tom Custer was the first soldier to receive the Medal of Honor twice.  The story I heard in Mission, South Dakota, was that, had there been anyone to report how he fought on that hillside in June of 1876, he might well have received his third.  Heroic sacrifice – and I have no idea of how much truth was in the conjecture and semi-legend I heard.  Heroic, futile, and unrecorded.

The Ukraine war seems the same – it’s hard to tell the difference between Ukrainians and Russians – the first Slavic state was the Kievan Rus, descended from Vikings and developing the area that would, centuries later, be known as Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.  The only heroic sacrifice that comes to my mind is Taras Bulba – and he was a fictional character played by Yul Brinner. 

One of the most enduring lessons from my undergraduate years occurred as I walked (from one class to another) past a teach-in protester.  It took less than a minute to walk past – and I have no idea who the speaker was.  So near as I can remember, about 57 years later, he explained, “Ho Chi Minh isn’t your problem.  The men you need to worry about are your own leaders.”

I personalized that lecture to understand that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a far greater threat than any Vietnamese leader.  No notes, no exam, yet probably the most effective single lecture I ever heard as a college student.

I have great respect for the heroic sacrifices that are recorded, and those that were not recorded.  I cannot read of the VMI cadets at New Market, in 1864 without choking up, and realizing that I could never match their conduct – yet the history of the War Between the States does a good job of showing that the heroic sacrifice was both real and wasted.  The Alamo, with its defenders dying to nearly the last man – and I do recall Louis Rose, who left the Alamo on March 3  and Brigido Guerrero – a Mexican deserter who spent those thirteen days of glory shooting at Santa Ana’s troops, then convinced them that the Tejanos had held him prisoner through the entire affair.  I have a lot of respect for Brigido’s presence of mind.

So I get back to the drones – a device that makes sacrifice moot and eminently wasted.  And I wonder – how much of their conflict goes back to Josef Stalin – the Georgian who ruled the Soviet Union?  A shared leader who left the divisions and hostilities that fueled the present war.