The Men Who Had to Pay (Wars cost more than just money.)
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(As usual, if you don't want to read the whole long post, click here for the music...)
SatisfiedMind614 has put up a post entitled War - What Is It Good For?.
The answer, of course, is, all too often, NOTHING.
(Sometimes, some places, you have to fight. Iraq is neither the time nor the place...)
My son-in-law spent a year in Iraq.
I spent a year in Viet Nam. (My time there wasn't nearly as nasty as Steve's in Iraq, but it was still A Bad Time.)
My aunt's first husband did a hitch in Korea.
My Dad did his time in World War 2.
My great-uncle (Dad's uncle) did hit time in France in WW1.
My paternal great-grandfather (the one who wasn't a draft-dodger) did his time as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army; don't know if he saw the elephant.
My maternal great-great-grandfather was a Confederate infantryman who almost lost an arm (and helped to write a new chapter in physical therapy).
With a little research, i could push it back further, i'm sure - someone in every generation of my descent was probably involved in a war, somewhere, some time.
Is this any way to run a railroad (metaphorically speaking)?
The Canadian poet Robert W. Service (known these days mainly for The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew) was a war-corrrespondent and ambulance driver in France in World War One. He wrote some incredibly strong poetry from the expereionce - maybe the language and the form are a little dated, to our eyes, but the message still slams home.
The Munition Maker repeats the refrain "There are no pockets in a shroud". The Man from Aphabaska tells the story of an old fur trapper who determines to join in one last scrap - "I'm their exhibition sniper ... They laugh to see me pluck a Boche five hundred yards away..." Jean Despresz tells a story of ever-more brutal reprisal and counter-reprisal, till, finally, it all turns on one nine-year-old peasant boy... 
Country Joe McDonald set several of Service's poems to music, and released an alubum of them back in the 70s, under the title War War War; it was reissued on CD but is long-since OP; last i saw there were two listed for sale through Amazon for right at $75 each.
And the last track on that CD is a poem that Service wrote, not about WW1, but at the end of the Boer War, instead. It's called The March of the Dead.
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*cough*Halliburton*cough*) on an ill-defined mission with insufficient equipment, well... SF author *David Drake*, a fellow 'Nam veteran - one who Saw the Elephant for real (which i, thank God, didn't) has written several excellent novels of futuristic combat inspired by his experiences. One of them - possibly his best - the novel *Rolling Hot* (contained in a collection entitled "*The Tank Lords* from Baen Books":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671877941/mikewebersweberw) sums the whole thing up in four words at the end: Don't mean nothin', snake - the same phrase that *Johnny Cash* used for the basis of his retrospective Viet Nam meditation, Drive on, "on the first *American Recordings* CD":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000009QPA/mikewebersweberw. (If you use the link above to my review of *Tank Lords*, be sure to click on the title or cover shot to go to Amazon and read *Michael Williamson*'s review as well...) *Current National Terror Alert Level*