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enlistments. The political an-tidraft protests of the Vietnam War encouraged ending the draft, but more important was the simple demographic fact that the military required an even smaller percentage of the rapidly growing population. During the Vietnam War the draft provided for deferments and exemptions and choices that had inevitably led to advantage and protection. Perceptions of inequity were based on the reality of inequity. The all-volunteer force is less representative than the Vietnam-era military that was shaped by the draft. Even if the “citizen soldiers” of American legend were never fully representative of the society they defended, these young men and women today are less a cross-section of America. This has consequences. We pay lip service to our “sons and daughters” at war, even if the children of some 99 percent of us are safely at home.
    The nature of wars and of warfare has changed. These things are never permanent, but we almost certainly have left for the foreseeable future the era of large armies mobilized to face an enemy across a huge field of combat. I would wager that we are as likely to return to archers with longbows at Agincourt as to see a replay of the massive-force landing at Normandy. It is not clear that our national narrative of how we fight wars has quite caught up to current circumstances. I conclude this book with some observations about the understandings that need to precede modern wars and about the provisions we need to make for those who fight them. I do this recognizing that events daily are changing circumstances. Historians are most comfortable writing about matters that are largely concluded. These current wars and American views of military service remain works in progress.
    In a December 2009 visit to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Gates said to troops near Kirkuk, Iraq, “One of the myths in the international community is that the United States likes war. And the reality is, other than the first two or three years of World War II,
there has never been a popular war in America.” 10 Each war in American history had support at the outset, although there has also been major opposition to each, excepting World War II. That war likely sustained support until the end, although costs and goals gradually became a little less clear in the public mind. In any event, in a democracy, wars need to maintain public support in order to be sustained; the idea of “popular wars” might best be left to fiction, to totalitarian regimes, or to people who don’t understand what war requires of those who fight.
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    When the Blakely Rifle was formally accepted at Grant Park in Galena in 1896, one of the park commissioners noted that these monuments were a “sure means of keeping alive the martial spirit which has been awakened by past triumphs.” 11 It is not clear that the cannon ever evoked such feelings. They did not for me and for my generation. Cannons rest quietly in many parks in many places in the United States. They are souvenirs and trophies. But removed from their bloody context and spiked from ever again thundering their lethal intent, they are as silent as statuary and as inviting as playground equipment. They should also serve as reminders that war can touch quiet places and peaceful communities.
    These weapons say little about the horror of war, but within our peaceful playgrounds and parks, they whisper that it is best to remember some things that many would prefer to forget, or even never to learn. Let the children play, but also allow the rusting ordnance to provide quiet reminders. Wars are not games, and they surely are not pleasant experiences for those who fight them. This book seeks to help us to remember that.

CHAPTER 2
    â€œThe Mystic Chords of Memory”
    The Obligations of a Democracy to Those Who Fight Its Wars
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    I N 1799 ANTHONY HASWELL, a feisty Bennington,