Sunday, August 21, 2011

21 August 2011 Welcome home, thanks for helping us sell our beer



Please read the article below in its entirety.  

      On the home front, reminders of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq come in small doses


The wars came to the Nationals baseball game, as they always do, in the third inning.
            “The wounded troops from Walter Reed Army Medical Center had assembled in the stands behind home plate. Those in wheelchairs were in front. The ambulatory stood behind them. The Nationals pitcher threw a strike for the third out.
            “Give a warm welcome to brave servicemen and women and their families joining us tonight,” the stadium announcer intoned. Now the troops were on the big screen in center field, and the modest Tuesday night crowd was standing, hooting and cheering.
            “Sgt. Anthony Verra, who lost both legs and part of his right hip when he stepped on a buried bomb last year, waved his complimentary Nationals cap. His wife, Shauna, held their 1-year-old daughter on her hip and gently rubbed her husband’s shoulder. Behind them, a 19-year-old private first class, injured by a mine two months earlier, balanced on trembling legs. His right hand was curled and twitchy. He gazed up at the half-empty stadium and cried.
            “The applause lasted for 63 seconds…
Cassi Creek:
(Budweiser decided to use the returning soldier theme to sell more beer.)
            A melancholy ballad called “Goin’ Home,” by the blues-rock guitarist Dan Auerbach, plays in the background of the ad, which closes with the message, “Proudly Serving Those Who Serve.”
The commercial is notable for what it does not include. An early version opened with the sound of thumping helicopters and a three-second shot of soldiers carrying water jugs in front of tents, draped in camouflage netting. The scene was cut.
“The sand read too much like Afghanistan,” Byrne said.
Neither Byrne nor Budweiser wanted the ad to be too closely associated with a particular conflict. Byrne’s goal was to evoke an emotional response from a public that he knew was tired of war. His soldier looks vulnerable and exhausted. The ad is supposed to make people cry, and it does.
The spot performed so well in surveys that Budweiser chose to run it in heavy rotation throughout the NBA Finals. It played over and over, the war in a 60-second burst.

“If there are 17 beer choices, I might be more inclined to pick Budweiser because it put out a message that I respect and that made me feel something,” Byrne said.
            The war in 10 seconds
            “Mark Wise had seen the patriotic beer commercials. As a patient at Walter Reed, he had been on the wounded-warrior trips to the watch the Nationals play.
            ““I experience a fair amount of paranoia concerning ... my visible injuries,” Wise wrote in an e-mail to an Army friend. “And I deal with people who don’t understand the sacrifice made by all service members, particularly those in direct combat roles.”
            “To explain his scars, Wise developed a short account of his military service: “I was in Afghanistan, and there was a firefight,” he would say. “The guy next to me stepped on a mine. It blew me up, and I was in the hospital for a while.”
            “There was his entire war, reduced to a 10-second exchange.
            They leapt across an irrigation ditch and crouched behind a wall as Wise directed the fight. Michel, who had a grenade launcher, asked Wise to switch spots with him so he could get off a better shot.
            “Wise leaned forward, resting his hand on the mud wall. As Michel stepped over him, the radioman’s foot came to rest on a buried mine containing about 40 pounds of explosives…”
Cassi Creek:   The idea that a major corporation would consider our armed forces members as fodder for a sales campaign is entirely alien to me.  I can’t find language that sufficiently expresses the dept h of my revulsion and contempt for the people who thought this one up. 
            As the current wars drag on with our all-volunteer forces attempting to execute one or more aspects of our nation’s foreign policy, the gap between our armed forces and our civilian populace grows wider. 
            It is hard to relate many of the experiences that come with military service to those who have not worn the uniform.  Some facets are all but impossible to convey.  When there is no commonality of experience, there is little understanding of what previous generations shared. 
            I’ve taken care of wounded in the field.  I’ve been under fire and have been lucky enough to come home intact.  I’ve taken care of wounded in a stateside hospital, seen them undergo long-term repairs and rehab that restore as much normalcy as possible.  I’ve seen them make the outside bus trips and heard them talk about people staring past them.  That was during VietNam and there was a lot of divisive behavior then that was intentionally hurtful. 
            I recall the isolation that came when I returned to university and found myself separated from the student body by my service and my inability to relate well to anyone who wasn’t a veteran also. 
            The current crops of veterans have been treated better by the nation that sent them off to war.  They are not expected to hide their service in order to fit in.  They are somewhat more welcome in schools.  But they are often unable to find jobs when they return home.   The social impact of their service is immense if they are not wounded.  If they took massive damage, they’ll be singled out forever. 
            The populace is doing a bit better at welcoming them home if one overlooks no jobs and no homes for too many.  But the use of their war experiences to sell beer is inexcusable.  They deserve so much better than ritualized applause lasting a minute. 
            Condensing one soldier’s life-changing injuries into a ten second burst of information is a self-protection tool.  He will never tell that tale without reliving every second of it.  It will haunt him forever.  The impact is impossible to relate to a non-soldier whether in 10 seconds or 60 hours. 
            It would be wonderful if, upon return from combat tours, our troops were met, not with tawdry ad campaigns using their service to sell bad beer; but with new soldiers taking their turn in the wars our government finds necessary to wage.  

Thanks for reading the article and my comments.
Your conclusions may differ from mine.  

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