War

Results of War, the threat of War and actual War has lurked in my life for all of my 84 years. From the time I was curious enough to ask ‘what and why’, I’ve heard of War. As a very young child, when I saw men with missing arms or walking with crutches because a leg was missing, I was told they had been in the war. On more than one occasion I saw men without legs sitting on boards similar to the skate boards of today. Being only a few inches above the sidewalk, the men propelled themselves along by pushing with their arms. I never saw them talking to people I knew; they were strangers passing thru town and I never knew from where they came or where they were going.

I have a vivid memory of an ex soldier creating mud sculptures on the river bank under a small bridge. After neighbor children excitedly told of a man making mud figures down by the river, my sister Adeline and I raced to join the crowd watching as the artist created mud soldiers in uniform with guns. The audience whispered appreciative comments about the details of the sculpture as they circled around to get a better view or drop money in a hat. No one asked the man’s name or where he was from. He was another ex- soldier passing thru town.

Adeline and I often visited our Girl Scout leader’s house and saw the photograph of her father in his Army uniform. In the large black and white photo, he stood straight and tall with his gun by his side. The man in the photo was quite different from the man we knew who wore overalls and went to work every day. We were always curious and asked what it had been like when he was in the war. Dad had been too young to fight in the war, but he and his brother showed their patriotism by getting American flag tattoos on their arms. They did so without permission but Grandma and Grandpa A had to accept the ‘fait accompli’.

I was in the third grade when I started reading the newspaper and browsing the photos. A great deal of the news was over my head but I skimmed headlines and read captions under photos. When the war photos of Japan and China began to appear in the paper I studied the pictures with curiosity. When Mom asked me to gather all the old newspapers and bundle them, I took time to sort thru the pages and look at war pictures. I remember asking Mom if she thought we would ever have a war in our own country.

In the lower grades at school we learned about the Civil War. Because Mom came from the North and Dad’s family were Southerners, the drama of freeing the slaves took a prominent place in our imaginations. Our childish perception of the War Between the States came from Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation Emancipation along with stories of the Underground Railroad and songs like My Darling Nellie Grey.

Comprehension of the Civil War became more profound as we got older. Our family history is deeply rooted in that struggle since we had members fighting on both sides of the conflict. One year, during Dad’s three week vacation, Grandma and Grandpa A. and uncle ‘Bus’ from Middlesboro, Kentucky, took us to see the old family plantation in Virginia. I was 15 years old and in high school at the time. I joined the adults in meandering the grounds and woods while the younger kids headed for a wide creek at the bottom of a small hill. The slave cemetery, enclosed with a wooden railing, was small, only 4 or 5 graves, but it made a big impression on me. Grandma’s father, Caleb, had been born on the place. He had been taken prisoner as a confederate soldier and sent up the Ohio River to a military camp. He later escaped and hid in a cave for three days before getting to safety.

I was still in high school during Italy’s war with Ethiopia and the Spanish Civil War. Volumes have been written about the devouring of Europe by Germany, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the years of WWII. The horrors of war were finally behind us but peace agreements were no sooner signed, than we went to war with Korea, then Vietnam. The first Iraq war was a prelude to the Iraq war we are now embroiled in. The Muslim attack on the World Trade Center in New York was the beginning of our War with Afghanistan which continues as we fight the Iraqis. I would not be at all surprised if there weren’t plans afoot for a war with Iran and another with North Korea. After all these wars, is it any wonder that I have become anti-war?!!