When I was nine years old, we moved to a house with fields and woods and a creek. Several of our neighbors were Quakers, but this didn’t stop me from fantasizing about war. This illusion was helped along by a neighbor boy named Kevin who told me the hole in the glass of our front door was made by a Confederate bullet, fired at the house in the waning days of the Civil War. I was not yet a student of history, so didn’t know the Civil War had ended in 1865 and that our house was built in 1913, though that knowledge would not have dampened my enthusiasm for war.
I even pretended to be a Union soldier, filling a pillowcase with the implements of war—a slingshot, a mess kit, a canteen, a pocketknife, a book of matches, a sleeping bag, and one can of Dinty Moore beef stew, enough to sustain one Union soldier for one night in the woods behind our house, which I imagined was Gettysburg. So off I would go to face the Confederates in battle, pillowcase over my shoulder, protecting our town from the Rebel scourge. After a night in the woods, I would pretend the War was over, a victory for the Union, and I would commence the long trek home, which I imagined to be about five hundred miles, though it was only a quarter of a mile, always within view of our house.
As I walked through the fields toward home, I imagined the elation of my parents at my safe return after four long years, and the glorious reception that awaited me. My mother would cry, my father would shake my hand and tell me I was a man. My brothers would regard me with awe. My sister would hug me. Then I would walk in the back door, my father would look at me, and instead of shaking my hand and telling me I was a man, would say, “I need you to mow the yard today.” And my dream would fizzle away.
Even after I became a Quaker and registered as a conscientious objector, I still found myself wondering, from time to time, what kind of soldier I might have been. It still gripped me. In his book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, the author Chris Hedges writes, “The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal.”
The thought of war was certainly an enticing elixir to me, and though I rejected war outwardly, inwardly I was still susceptible to its appeal. Intellectually and spiritually, I scorn war. It is barbaric, evil, and without merit. Yet, I have watched the television show Band of Brothers three times. War is an enticing elixir.
Here is the part of the story The Band of Brothers left out. I had a family member who saw heavy combat in World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge. He returned home, welcomed by a family who thought he’d escaped the war unharmed, but there was injury they could not see. His wartime experience had a disastrous effect on every aspect of his life. He was an inattentive husband, an abusive father, a cold and distant relative, who had few friends. When I was young, I dismissed him as a cranky old man. Now I believe his experience of war caused him to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, the injury of which didn’t end with his death. His only living child is emotionally crippled, unable to sustain relationships. This is what the war movies never show, the deep trauma visited upon those who wage war and those who love them.
Politicians and presidents would have us believe our greatest problems are solved by war, that killing the right person will usher in an era of peace. We know just the opposite is true, that war inflicts enduring damage, passed from generation to generation, part and parcel of our emotional DNA.
We have mastered the ability to number the war dead with great precision. 175 schoolgirls killed when we bombed the school in Iran. Thirteen American soldiers dead thus far, thousands of Iranians and Israelis, the numbers growing every day. We have perfected the science of counting bodies. What we do not count, what we conveniently forget are the parents, siblings, and friends whose lives are also shattered when their loved ones die. What we do not count are the lives haunted by grief, those yet unborn who will one day bear the scars of their ancestors’ wars. And bearing those scars, are more likely to perpetuate and multiply the pain of war. We are never able to fully count the eventual casualties of war.
When I began dating Joan, a man named Sonny lived by himself on the road into town from Joan’s farm. He had gone off to Vietnam a happy, gentle farm boy, but returned so severely damaged by the experience, he could barely function. I would drive into town past Sonny’s trailer and see him standing in his yard, then drive back past an hour later, and there he would be, standing in the exact same place, having never moved, as if paralyzed by pain. In St. Louis, Missouri, at the National Personnel Records Center, the records of every soldier are stored. I could apply to see Sonny’s record. It would tell me when he was drafted, where he served, and what he did. What it wouldn’t tell me is that Sonny returned to Indiana so broken by war he was never the same. Too damaged to marry, too broken to work, so wounded by war, he was incapable of life. This is the cost we never count amidst the enticing elixir of war.
Thus, did Jesus say, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons and daughters of God, who makes the sun shine on both the evil and the good, who nourishes with rain the just and the unjust.”
Friends, resist with all your heart the temptation to love only some.
Resist with all your heart the temptation to cherish only your nation’s citizens and no one else’s.
Resist, with all your heart, the lie that war brings freedom, when all around us are those shackled by the chains of war.