![]() ![]() It seems impossible for that experience not to change how I view human life.) This possibility of alienation, I think, is some part of the reason for Americans to celebrate Veterans Day: to welcome its veterans into its polity to place in the public’s imagination the reality of war, not to provoke pity or some retroactive slap on the back that says “attaboy,” or “attagirl,” but actually to begin the work of constructing a representation of that experience… since shared experience is so important to, and constitutive of, this apparently fragile thing we all nevertheless need: a polity. (My own transition from active duty has been full of reminders about how strange it is that for the last decade, my purpose was to participate in an existential defense against mortal threats-a defense that consists in many cases of hunting for and taking human life. But those in the military, and our veterans, have lived in a certain constant proximity to, or context of, death-a living that for better or for worse often instills in them certain priorities or habits that can alienate and inhibit them from participation in the polity, or at very least present a challenge in representing one’s experience to others. In some ways we ought not want to diminish that gulf until it is our time to do so, and our own mortality intervenes. There is a gulf between us and Alejandro-a knowledge of death that separates us. May he rest in peace and eternal light shine upon him. The final moment of descent… when the impacting rounds shifted or the helicopter stabilized and you pulled up-at that moment Alejandro kept going… he continued beyond our grasp with appalling finality. Then again, if you’re reading this, you survived, with the result that there is a gulf between us and that young man Alejandro Romero. ![]() It is, however, in my mind a standing question as to whether any two people encounter the certainty of death with the same thoughts and feelings. Can we imagine the moments after his secondary chute deployed-when it snared in the first chute and he realized there was no other backup? What were his thoughts? Was there anything recognizable as a thought? Perhaps if you have been under fire with a certain confidence in your imminent death, or if you’ve been in a crashing helicopter watching the ground or ocean rush at you, you might know an approximation of what he thought or felt. What must the rest of that fall have been like… We might imagine reaching for the knife, sawing at the cords with a surging feeling of desperation. He started spinning rapidly in near free fall… and he died when he hit the ground. Plummeting through the air he deployed his secondary chute-but it snared in the trailing remains of his first chute and became ineffective. ![]() Witnesses say that he could be seen pulling out his knife and attempting to cut away the primary parachute in order to clear the way to deploy his backup. A few seconds later he realized that his main chute had failed to open all the way. He made a clean exit from the aircraft for a double-bag, static-line jump. Married just a few weeks before, Alejandro was now with his unit in Arizona conducting parachute-training. The 22-year-old Alejandro was a corporal in the Marine Corps who served as a scout with 3rd Reconnaissance Bn. ![]() On Monday morning, January 22nd, 2018, a young man named Alejandro Romero was in a KC-130 aircraft 7,500 feet over the desert in Arizona. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and conscience of the people. A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. ![]()
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