When I was a young boy, I listened to the stories my parents told about WWII. They both served in Europe. My Father did not see much combat but would talk of the destruction that leveled cities. My Mother was a combat nurse and saw many battles and witnessed the horror of the broken bodies of young men, as well as serving in the concentration camps when her mash unit came to help. Like most boys, I began to glamorize war, playing s with my friends with toy guns. I even tried to enlist in the army in my early twenties. I was told by the enlistment doctor that I would not make it through boot camp. I had severe hearing loss and torn knees from a motorcycle accident. I went to work at a pipeline company where most of the men were veterans. There was no glamour there. If asked about their experience, you would see the men, some with ashen faces, look at each other and remain silent. These men and women were all heroes to me because of the courage, humility, and discipline they brought to their work. There were many other wars in the 20th century. The veterans that I have met, the nightmare of those wars has affected them all. It is hard to believe that in the 21st century, war is still a way to settle differences between nations.
Rod Serling, famous for The Twilight Zone, was a combat veteran of WWII serving in the Philippines. Serling, a paratrooper who fought through Manila and Leyte, spent his 20th birthday on leave, recovering from the intense combat. Years later remembering that day, Serling wrote: “It was a gray morning carved out of gray clay and shadowed by fog. It was not just a time—it was a mood—the kind of mood that is part of the province of combat and never conveyed vicariously to the human being who has not lived physically with the tension, the violence, the anguish of protracted war.”
His daughter, in her book As I Knew Him: My Dad Rod Serling, wrote: “What I vividly recall is my dad having nightmares, and in the morning I would ask him what happened, and he would say he dreamed the Japanese were coming at him. So it was always present, and clearly . . . he got it off his chest in his writing."
““The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war”.
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From the little Shack: As we honor our Veterans, Pray for Peace and an End to all War.
“ There is nothing good in War. Except its ending.”