Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?

Growing up in the 1960s, I listened to Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone[1] all the time (Spotify PP&M ). It was a song of the times, a song about the pointlessness of war, a song that reflected the anti-war generation. It comes from deep roots, a Cossack song, an Irish melody, but the version I knew was put together by Pete Seeger in 1955.

In the opening stanza, the song asks “where have all the flowers gone?” and answers that they’ve been picked by young girls. The girls in their turn have gone for husbands, the husbands for soldiers, and the soldiers are “gone to graveyards every one.”

And the graveyards are gone to flowers. It was Joe Hickerson in 1960 who added this last circular motion to the song. We never learn, the song says, we just keep on sending our young men (and women, nowadays) to fight and then burying them in graveyards.

I remember young men being drafted for the Vietnam War. My neighbor’s son went and didn’t come back. Most of my friends didn’t go, they had school deferments or psychiatrists’ notes. Today, we say “thank you for your service” and have a volunteer army. None of my US circle has a soldier in their families.

Here in Israel it isn’t like that. We all have family and friends in the army, doing their initial national service or getting called up for routine reserve duty. And of course, on the 7^th and 8^th of October 2023, getting an emergency “Tzav 8” call up and rushing off to hell. I mean Gaza.

Some decades ago the son-in-law of an American immigrant we knew was killed in fighting. The immigrant felt a sense of pride and belonging at having joined the elite circle of bereaved families! I remember when an American-Israeli colleague lost his son, feeling that same connection, even though I wasn’t particularly friendly with that colleague. How absurd and yet how true to the Israeli spirit.

Israel is very small and tight-knit. That old claim of “six degrees of separation” doesn’t work here. You are rarely more than 2 or maybe 3 hops from whoever you are looking for. Since October 7, all of Israel has been that close to a soldier, a hostage, a person murdered by terrorists, a person whose house was hit by a missile, or just another family huddling in their safe space like you. I too am connected by less than 3 degrees of separation from the casualties and hostages of the war.

One of my colleagues, a man I have worked with for many years, was called up almost right away. He was in Gaza for months, leaving his wife and kids to cope with constant running to the shelter and no school or kindergarten. When he came back, he told me how weird it was to come back to his own life, his own family, the daily routines that had been his norm “before.” I felt very close to him in those talks, and for me, he stood in for all the soldiers going off to fight for our survival.

Each Israeli has that person, the one who went to Beeri on October 7^th to save lives, the hostage, the one who fought in Gaza or flew a jet to Iran, or protected the northern border. The one who brings it all home to them.

I am just lucky that all my people came home. So many didn’t.

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
Oh when will they ever learn? [2]

–

[1] “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” words and music by Pete Seeger, additional verses by Joe Hickerson. Publishers: Sanga Music, Inc. and The Bicycle Music Company.

[2] See Note 1