ANDERSON – For nearly a quarter Hoosiers, born after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 17-year-long war that followed, Memorial Day is especially prescient.
They are a generation born into war. But for many young people in Madison County, the global war on terrorism and its 6,952 U.S. armed services casualties feel far away.
“I am sure it has impacted how I see the world,” said Anderson High School senior Melody Hood. “But I am thinking … the reality is that we don’t really see it.”
Though she’s learned about the world wars, and the Korean, Vietnam and cold wars that followed, Hood said the current war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran feels less highlighted both in school and out in the world, even though more Americans have been killed in the current wars than in the War for Independence.
“I really feel that media, and people are trying to mute it in a way,” she said. “Like in Vietnam they published a lot of negative stuff and there as backlash – but with (the war on terror) you don’t hear much about it.”
Unlike the daily reminders of the cost of war Americans were exposed to during the Vietnam War, as pictures of flag-covered caskets and decimated villages on their television screens, many young people told The Herald Bulletin they rarely discuss the war on terrorism.
Some of that disconnect can be attributed to the relatively small number of active-duty military personnel, less than one-half of 1 percent of the population. A tiny fraction compared to 1969, at the peak of US involvement in Vietnam when almost 2 percent of the population was active duty, and in 1945, during World War II, it was almost 9 percent.
For Colin Switzer, a senior at AHS who plans to join the Army National Guard after he graduates, that’s one of the big reasons he thinks many young people aren’t connected to the war.
“Unless you know someone who is serving, or you are serving, it doesn’t really affect you,” Switzer said.
With her brother currently in basic training, Emma Losch, a senior at Liberty Christian School, said she thinks about the war every day as she worries about her brother.
“It’s very terrifying, that he could be killed. It’s nerve-wracking because we don’t get to hear from him,” she said.
And that’s why this Memorial Day will have such an impact on Losch.
“The people who are really celebrating it are the people it affects, people who know someone who has been killed and people who know someone in the Army or other service,” she said.
For Switzer, the holiday is a solemn day. Each year he visits the grave of his uncle, who served, and spends the afternoon with his many family members who have been a part of the armed services.
“It’s a big job just for them to be there, and they chose to go through that, and I thank them every day,” he said. “And on Memorial Day, it’s a day to remember all of those who have lost their lives, and remember their families.”