Guest Opinion | The hidden glories of war

— from Beth Reigel —

This is in response to a letter to the editor at the Island’s Sounder regarding a veteran who spoke to a class of second graders at one of our schools. John Cook asked why we are glorifying war to these children (and not peace). I recalled a story that might address this, but its retelling requires more than the few words with which I was allowed to respond at the Sounder.

A friend told me his war story one day when I asked about his past. He was from Yugoslavia and his parents were both professors at a local university. During World War II his country fell into chaos with widening sectarian violence among religious factions, fascists and communists.

During a particularly violent period when Dimitri was twelve, he said he would go outside each morning and see a new group of people hanging by their necks from light poles lining the street.

One day his parents disappeared. He never saw nor heard from them again. Not long after that he was taken by the Germans and sent to a huge underground munitions factory in Germany that used forced child labor to make bombs for the war. He and many other boys were kept under heavily armed guard behind a barbed wire fence. He was there for three years.

One day he and the other boys heard a rumbling sound in the distance. The boys asked the guards about it but were waved off. The boys couldn’t help but notice that with each passing day the rumbling grew louder and the guards increasingly agitated. One day the boys woke up to find that the Germans had fled the camp. All of them. Then they spied coming over the
horizon soldiers, and behind them, tanks.

Dimitri said that was the first time he ever laid eyes on Americans. The first one he got close enough to study was a sergeant who was cutting the lock off the gate to gain entry to the camp. The sergeant had strapped to his waist a Colt .45 pistol with a nude woman carved into the ivory grips. This made quite an impression on young Dimitri who decided at that moment that these Americans were A-OK.

After the war Dimitri moved to America to live with an aunt and became a successful structural engineer. The sergeant? I don’t know what became of him, but likely he was just like the all the other dads in my neighborhood growing up. He fought hard and defeated an evil straight out of hell, he came home, got a job, got married, and raised a family. All these men, Dimitri included, got on about the business of living and put the war as far behind them as their wounds, seen and unseen, would allow. None of those many veterans in my neighborhood glorified war. Not one.

My best friend’s dad who fought in Normandy on D-Day was adamant about spreading peace following the war. He raised his family of six girls to be of service to humanity. They are, and so are their children, both here and abroad.

The war never left my friend’s dad across the street from us. He was in the Eighth Air Force and could never shake that horrifying experience. He finally gained sobriety in his late eighties then died shortly after. He certainly didn’t see the glory in war. Neither did all the other dads in my neighborhood who worked through their PTSD while eating sandwiches and swapping war stories during lunch break. Few of them would speak of their experience outside that tight-knit group. They might share funny stories with the kids, but if a curious child asked about the rough stuff, they were shut down quickly. Those of us who hadn’t been to war learned it was impolite to ask.

I don’t know what was said by the veteran who visited the second-grade class. I wasn’t there. What was perceived by some as glorification of war could have been perceived by others as the vital importance of having people willing to put themselves between an aggressor and a victim being pounded into dust. Is seven or eight years old too young? Maybe, but Dimitri wasn’t much older than that when vile, hellish people snatched away his parents and took him as a slave.

To me it seems unwise to keep the horrors of history from children. I don’t think it is wise to tear down or blot out reminders of past evils and the great struggles to overcome it. Peace shines much brighter, it is more precious contrasted against that dark memory.

I hesitate to begrudge the veteran who spoke to the class and the school that invited him to speak. Hopefully his speaking has opened discussions with parents, family members and teachers. Hopefully, the kids get a firm grasp on history and gain much needed wisdom that will ultimately lead to strong, moral adults with informed critical thinking.