Adoration and shaming, the fairness and the horror

It was and is never fair to have women cajole and shame men to be heroes, but that has always been a very effective ploy.  Nobody who doesn't have to be in the frontlines and face the horrors of war there has the right to demand of anyone else to provide protection for them. 

To be protected through sacrifices made by others is a privilege that must be earned, it is not a right.  It is absolutely atrocious that feminists who clamour for equal rights for women vilify and slander all men and even blame them for wanting to fight wars.  That is just as true in peace times, in which, now just as always, for as long as statistics for that were recorded, men comprise 19 out of every 20 job fatalities. (See also: The 1989 Montreal Massacre in the context of men’s sacrifices, 2008 12 07, by Professor Jeffrey Asher.)

It seems that the problem of whether or not to have women serve in combat positions would be solved very expediently if all feminists were drafted.   The feminists would soon sing a different song.

My brother escaped in August of 1945, while in transit from an American- to a French POW camp.  He made his way home, just a few days after he had turned 18.  Yet, if he would have been caught by the German military during or shortly after the war, he would certainly have been shot.  The same fate was then quite possibly in wait for him if either the French or the Americans would have caught him after he escaped.  To boot, after he had travelled back home (often sleeping in hay stacks during the day and travelling by night), because he was an escapee the German officials weren't willing to issue a ration card for him, so that he couldn't even purchase food to eat.  That is the gratitude of the fatherland in action. (Full story — translated excerpt from my brother's diary; MSWord file, 79 kB)

The gratitude of the Fatherland will be yours

One of the slogans used in Germany,
both during the First- and Second World War
(Der Dank des Vaterlandes ist Euch gewiss)

If the laws to force men to do the dying don't exist, they'll be created.[1]   There has never been military draft for women, and it is extremely unlikely that it ever will.

The force used to make men do the dying varies with the rank of men in the armed forces.  Those in the lower ranks are far more likely to be executed when they are suspected of shirking their sacred duty.  The Russian Army employed commissars in combat — in some cases one for every ten soldiers — that literally drove men into battle and killed them mercilessly on the spot if the men showed any signs of faltering.  When the German Army stood at the gates of Moscow, Stalin could not get enough of his men to do the dying for Bolshevism, but enticing them to save Mother Russia, the very Mother Russia whose idea and ideals he did his best to eradicate, that did the trick

The British military executed 300 enlisted men during the First World War, men who may not even have been shying away from dying for their country.  It sufficed that the leaders wanted to set examples — to show a sign of force that no 'cowardice' would be tolerated, at the pain of death.  The same fate befell a handful of officers.  If officers would have been subjected to the same rigorous rules as their men, more than a handful of them would have been executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy.

All of that is something that not one woman ever had or will have to face.  Men's and women's 'duties' are on opposite ends of that reality.  Whenever required, most men happily serve their women in "the field of glory."  They adore them for being allowed to do that,

even if it meant little more for them than to live out their lives in misery and pain, and to be spat upon in later years.  Not long ago, one of them, a wounded and decorated English war hero in the Second World War, hanged himself, because the courts persecuted him for defending himself against young thugs who were turning his life into a living hell for having been a soldier fighting for their country.  He suffered more than he could humanly endure, once for his country and then at the hands of his country.  Will his name show up on any memorial?

And if that adoration isn't enough to cajole them into making the ultimate sacrifice "for Home and Country," then there are far more effective means by which to make men do it.  The following poster was used for that in England during the First World War.  The government campaign that produced that poster had the desired result but also some surprising ones.

Order of the White Feather

On the last Monday of May each year is Memorial Day in the U.S.A., a day "to honor all Americans who have died in all wars. ... it is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces." (The quote is from Wkipedia) Right, but this video shows that there is much more to the consequences of serving like that.

Purple Heart's Final Beat - A Soldier Suicide Story (5:38 minutes)

From the video: "70 percent of Iraq veterans return to divorce. Within five years of their return, 90 percent get divorced. Only 1.5 percent get fair treatment from our court system. Most will live the rest of their lives in poverty. Most will be alienated from their children. Countless veterans a month choose this option. I love my country... but my country doesn't love me...."

• 90 percent of army suicides are men
  
  Army Suicides Up, Prevention Efforts Strengthened
  
  http://www.army.mil/-news/2007/08/16/4459-army-suicides-up-prevention-efforts-strengthened/

• Congress.org,
  
  Rising military suicides
  The pace is faster than combat deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan.
  By John Donnelly
  
  More U.S. military personnel have taken their own lives so far in 2009 than have been killed in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars this year, according to a Congressional Quarterly compilation of the latest statistics from the armed services.
  
  As of Tuesday, at least 334 members of the military services have committed suicide in 2009, compared with 297 killed in Afghanistan and 144 who died in Iraq, the figures show....
  
  But even those who have been most intensely focused on the issue said they found the new numbers alarming. So far in 2009, the Army has had 211 of the 334 suicides, while the Navy had 47, the Air Force had 34 and the Marine Corps (active duty only) had 42.  (Full Story)
  _____________
  Note by F4L: The terms "military personnel" and "members of the military services" very nicely smooth things over, so that we can even feel compassion for the women who share the horror of a calamity that kills almost exclusively men.  Nevertheless, the numbers mentioned in the article do not identify whether they include veterans.  Somehow I doubt that that they do, because veterans are not considered to be members of the military services any longer.  The problem is in all likelihood far larger than is being let on.

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