What’s In A Gnome?
Buy a garden gnome in support of our troops!
Show your heartfelt support for our troops, where-ever they may be. (And remember, redundancy brings traffic to my website!)
This Amazon listing is the lowest-priced seller out there on the web today. I checked, saving you the trouble.
“Troops” is such a grown-up word. It evokes images of war-seasoned men and women running off to battle with high-tech know-how and full comprehension of what they are getting themselves into.
We were filming a movie at Trenton Air Force base a while back. We were using a platoon of solidiers as background performing artists. I went over to the field tent that we had set up to harbour everyone near the film set, while off camera. I just couldn’t get over all the fresh-scrubbed faces of the kids all decked out in green. That’s the word that came to mind, “kids”. Baby-faced, grade ten-looking minors. These are our seasoned soldiers folks. Being shipped out to Afghanistan the month after we were filming on this base.
If these soldiers look like trusting, exuberant, bursting with life, carefree children to me, then they look like this to the higher military brass as well. Nice going fellas. Sending kids out to do the dirty work.
I kid you not. Not one of the kids that we spoke to thought that they were actually in any danger. It was like they were in a dreamworld of comradery and friendship and social security. All without the threat of death that a peace-time enlistment could indeed provide. It was surreal.
Friends of ours son is a career soldier in his early thirties. He has finally been sent over to Afghanistan also, after being on the tragic receiving end of the death notices of many of he and his wife’s friends up at the base in Petawawa. He also told us that no-one he knew overseas was prepared for the reality of war and death. He said that many of his friends posted in Afghanistan were facing internal turmoil at their lack of psychological preparedness for the event of the actual loss of friends. “Pure chaos over there in terms of emotional preparedness. People are just falling apart inside.”
I love these kids and I want them to be safe. Showing support is honourable. So is using satellite imagery to hone in on the roads, and infrared film for night vigilanceof these known, limited routes of troop transport. The only time anyone seems to be killed over there is by roadside bombs. So why not just use air transport? I don’t know. The expense? What price do you put on someone’s life? And if the Taliban are making money off the sale of opium poppies that they have the Afghan farmers growing for them, then why don’t we burn the poppy fields and plant vegetables and wheat? If we do it, by force, then the farmer won’t be blamed by the Taliban for siding with the outside world. If the farmer does it himself, without the appearance of coercion, because we smile at him and pat him on the back, he will surely be the target of Taliban retribution.
Show support for these young troops. Let’s all buy a support our troops garden gnome, but please, let’s get these young people home.
Buy a gnome, but bring them home.
New mantra.
What’s in a gnome?
Polyresin.
What’s in a name?
Your children.
Let’s not list any more of them on an war memorial wall.
Pat.
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