A Few Thoughts… On sergeants, generals and firefights

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

In Missoula is a house on North Street referred to by its occupants as the Food Shack. It’s home to college students, recent graduates and miscellaneous other young singles, a successful experiment in rotational communal living that I’m privileged to be part of, even if it’s in a peripheral sort of way. A couch in the living room has often been mine for a night or five, and the sensibilities of my hosts and hostesses are remarkably like my own, given the disparity of our ages. They’re the kids and grandkids I didn’t have; full of fun and joy and wisdom and optimism. Once part of the Food Shack cohort, it seems to be for life. 

I’ll admit that this may be the most difficult column I’ve written in a long time, maybe ever. I’m trying to temper my anger at the leaders my generation has manifested with my admiration and hope for this generation, the one in the kitchen making 30 pizzas to celebrate a 30th birthday. That they have learned to be the way they are — caring, compassionate, loving, accepting and fully willing to use their corporate intelligence to make the world a better place — is a credit to their real parents and grandparents. 

Meanwhile, I’m nearly finished reading Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose, the story of World War II as seen through the eyes of those who landed in Normandy in June of 1944 and fought their way to Berlin and a German surrender in May of 1945. The men and women of that campaign were my parents’ generation. Had my dad been born in 1925 instead of 1928, he’d have been there with the high school senior classes of 1942 and 1943, living or dying or losing a leg in foxholes, minefields, house-to-house fighting, knee-deep mud and winter battles. 

If American soldiers and Army nurses of the Allied Expeditionary Force were alive today, they’d be ashamed — incensed, in fact — to find the government for which they fought to assure would endure in its current state. Today, Congress and the administration refuse to sanction Israel for murdering tens of thousands of innocents, while the Israeli prime minister declares the Israeli army is the most moral in the world. The major parties are making a deal that will continue to allow inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants. The Republican majority in Congress is blocking attempts to send ammunition to Ukraine so soldiers there can defend against Russian invaders carrying out the orders of Vladimir Putin, a sworn enemy of the United States. This last seems treasonous, and I think the soldiers of 1944-’45 might agree. 

The National Republican Party has a leader capable of almost any reprehensible deceit, lie, subterfuge or crime to regain the power he lost in the 2020 election. Both parties flounder in a fight for supremacy that does no one any good but the participants. They’re in a holding pattern marked by eternal arguing about policy and politics and “who’s in charge here?” The only concern either party seems to have is their own. 

My young friends and I stand in the Missoula kitchen and argue — I mean, “discuss” — the current political situation. I’m focused on the time between now and Nov. 5. They’re looking 20, 30, 50 years into the future, which I find amazingly hopeful. An analogy that comes to mind is the differing view of the frontline troops and the generals planning battles in the rear; ordering attack and retreat with the long view. While sergeants and their squads are experiencing the firefight that’s happening right now, and just trying to stay alive, the generals are trying to win the war. 

The generals, NCOs and all those around them are necessary to victory, but they all have to do their job to achieve it. I guess I’m a sergeant, because I see the coming election as a firefight that has to be won, even if it means choosing a lesser of two evils. Perhaps democracy will survive if Donald Trump is elected, but I highly doubt it. In any case, it would be a huge setback for the goals my young friends have as generals in the struggle to save the country — and the world. 

You may feel somewhat helpless in this struggle, but if you’re old enough to vote, you have a role as vital as the kids in the foxholes in 1944-’45. 

Come the primary and general elections, vote.