Paksworld

It’s Veteran’s Day in the U.S.,  which is a day of remembrance for more than those who died–remembrance also of those veterans who came home and quietly set about rejoining the fabric of civilian life–who became, or returned to being, farmers, carpenters, plumbers, police officers, parents, and so on.

Fictionally, veterans have had interesting “remembrance”…sometimes as foolish, self-centered old men boring everyone with their stories of wars past and demanding privileges that (on examination of their war record) they didn’t deserve…sometimes as heroes looked up to by the community for leadership.  In real life they’ve been reviled (as some were during and after ‘Nam), nearly canonized into faux sainthood, neglected (all too often), used for photo ops by ambitious politicians (all too often), and treated in all the various ways non-veterans have been treated.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte, in his books about the fictional Captain Alatriste, does a fine job showing the veteran’s view from inside–in this case inside 17th c. Spain, where the underpaid (and sometimes unpaid) Alatriste struggles to survive, having to become a hire-sword to keep bread in his mouth between campaigns with the tercio.   Veterans in some societies are seen as a liability, a menace, and in others as a resource.

In Paks’s world, veterans find the same mix of reactions, depending on whose veterans they were and where they are.   When there’s not a war on, as Kipling pointed out so eloquently, nobody wants the soldier around, and when there’s a war on, the old soldier may be wanted or unwanted, depending.  One of the men killed at Fort Hood last week had been trying to get back into the military for years–and finally did–and finally died.    In Paks’s third campaign year, in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, the Duke called out everyone he could, including some of his old veterans who had settled down in the north.  And some of them died.

There is no single day set aside in Paks’s world to honor those who served in the past, the living and the dead.   That was a deliberate choice, made knowing it would bother some people.  Each military group has its own tradition, and some of those do have a ceremony of remembrance that includes its living, but not-active, veterans.   Others shrug off those who retire.

Makes for interesting side-stories sometimes.   Something may come of it (though it hasn’t yet.)