Date with fate - post 8 - Duck and cover

3 October 2007

Date with fate - post 8 - Duck and cover

This entry was posted on 10/3/2007 10:38 PM and is filed under That Darn Orwell, Are we really inept, Fate Fairies.

Periodically in grade school, we were herded into the basement of my three-room Wisconsin country school for "Duck and Cover" drills. Some drill. Sit under a table for what seemed like hours and tell jokes and giggle. My wife's little school did not have a basement. She was ushered into the hall way. They were to huddle near their respective rooms as so if the "big one" dropped, the recovery crews could link the bodies to names and ages. Like there would be a recovery crew and if there was one, like they would have time to check on one of hundreds of schools. 

 When the Cuban Missile Crisis happened 45 years ago this month, it was hard to tell if it was "drill," or a real alert. We were sent home early one day during the Crisis. The buses waited as we exited the school in regimented columns. "Run Bobby," my teacher yelled to me. "You are not taking this serious." 

"Why? We would be incinerated soon enough. No need to rush." I was six years old. 

It was collective child abuse on a macro scale. In high school we had to take a class called "Medical Self Help." It taught us how to treat wounds and burns from a nuclear blast. I am told we were the last class to take it in my school. It was determined that it so depressed the students, the cost benefit analysis dictated it be canned. Besides, we all hounded the math teacher with comments like, "So why study for the algebra exam, we are all going to be incinerated anyway soon enough."

We weren't incinerated. The paradigm that insists we are too smart to incinerate ourselves stands tall. We are smug in our clever survival. 

Society smugly proclaims, "We must be smart, see, we are not shadows on the sidewalks. We ain't blowed ourselves up!" 

I see it as a date-with-fate on a colossal scale. Millions of people were not incinerated. At least so far. The fate fairies were otherwise preoccupied for the last 60 years. But again, regardless of fate - we as a society, are too smart to blow ourselves up, right? ...right?

This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Army Staff Sergeant Todd Cornell, age 38, who died Tuesday, November 9, 2004. The Iraqi unit he was serving with came under attack in Fallujah, Iraq. Sergeant Cornell was the 26th soldier from Wisconsin killed in action in Iraq. Cornell died while he was serving in an advisory role with the Iraqi unit. Cornell was assigned to the Detachment 9, 1st Battalion, 339th Infantry Regiment, Army Reserve, based in Michigan. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted Todd is survived by his mom and dad Renee and Robert Cornell, a daughter, Catlin, 10, and a son, Jake, 8, and a brother and a sister. Staff Sergeant Cornell had been in the military 16 years. He arrived in Iraq in February of 2004. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Todd Cornell joined the military after graduating from high school in Menomonee Falls. He lived in West Bend when home from duty.

3,809 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

28,093 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.

79 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

112 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.

Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.