The explosions began a full week before the 4th of July. A staccato crackle of ladyfingers and boom of illegal bombs capable of loosening stumps or splitting stone started at twilight. Evening by evening the din picked up momentum indicating another banner year for fireworks stands.
When Independence Day arrived, we picked up my younger daughters family for an escape to her sisters home in Sammamish. She abandons her home on Lake Stevens each 4th of July when her neighborhood takes on more the nature of a war zone than a national holiday plus giving new meaning to the Boomer Generation. From every dock a percussive thump of mortars launches flashy aerial displays until at least 10 oclock, enough holiday ordnance has exploded that a thick eye-burning cloud settles over the lake.
Independence Day fireworks displays are meant to remind us of the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air and thats good. But for a first time this year, I went all prickly and hostile at explosions down the block. What was the matter with me? In previous years Id happily hiked around the neighborhood to enjoy the show at someone elses expense since Im too tight-fisted to spring for the $300 pack that contains the really flashy stuff. Truth be known, with my kids grown and gone, I dont even buy sparklers.
Being a natural-born reactor, Im forever having to figure out why it is that I react to this or that. So when I turned grumpy over this years early explosions I set about searching inside my head for reasons for this new attitude and heres what I came up with.
Each year were bombarded with a fresh set of public safety bulletins warning about the dangers of fire works, and each year another community makes them illegal. These prohibitions seem trivial considering that for the past four years, explosions have dealt death or injury to so many of our nations young men. Though daily reports of military deaths hit us with mind-numbing regularity, each death impacts me as hard as the first casualty. Casualty. What a strange word. What is Casual about a death in combat?
Is there anything casual about 3,586 deaths, or 26,350 wounded? Those are just the ones who bled or died. After surviving multiple combat tours, tens of thousands of others return home to suffer knee-jerk spasms at the sound of explosions. Even celebratory explosions. Duck and cover. Was there a quiet place, a place of peace for our returned warriors on the 4th?
In good years when were not involved in messy wars, 4th of July fireworks routinely cause cats to go missing and dogs to cower under beds. If dumb animals are terrified about simple sonic onslaughts, consider how much fun the 4th must be for anyone who has witnessed, up close and personal, explosions causing trauma and death.
Combat photographers capture exploding IEDs so we can see how fireball after fireball destroys young lives. Lethal fireworks with murderous intent. Thats why time and circumstance wont let me enjoy explosions anymore. Even festive explosions trigger images of broken bodies and grieving families. Of all Independence Days, this should have been one to quietly take stock of whats happening to our nation.
C-SPAN treated me to a Middle-East street scene where teen-agers with AK-47s cranked off rounds into the air, celebrating because they out-killed their opponents that day. Each bullet and shell-casing cost more than the shooters family pays for food each day. The weapon, itself, cost more than the bicycle the boys father rides to work. It cost more than all the cookery utensils in his familys kitchen. Yet people with axes to grind continue to pass around weapons and bombs like Valentines Day cards in a third-grade classroom.
It was 10 oclock and firecrackers and rockets were reaching a crescendo down the street. Was the sound much different from small-arms fire in Iraq? What memories did they stir among veterans fresh back from fire-fights in the streets of Baghdad?
Near the street-ends of neighbors driveways, children clapped with glee as fathers torched off rockets. Boom. Boom. Spark-spewing projectiles lofted skyward to explode into gaudy incandescent geometries. As little voices cheered each on its way I watched them dance and squeal and envied them their innocence.
My war was in Korea where I was stationed at the fringe of ongoing hostilities, so Im somewhat familiar with the sounds of war. Ugly as it was, the Korean Conflict was a walk in the park compared with what our troops in Iraq are experiencing and that should be the focus of our Independence Day thoughts. Their experiences in Iraq are tightly connected with not only their own mortality but with changes in our nations fortunes.
Independence Day should echo with inspirational phrases describing our nation: Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. We should pause to consider Abraham Lincolns intent when he honored another wars fallen at Gettysburg. Though the ill-conceived war in Iraq should not be compared with Lincolns war to preserve the Union, it can and should strike us as a lesson to be learned, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth in freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
While our troops dodge bullets in Iraq, we have serious work to do on the home front if Lincolns ideal is to be reclaimed. Otherwise, well soon find ourselves embroiled in another Iraq.

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