The Lost Generation

During WW1 nearly 10 million soldiers lost their lives. Of these about 1 million were killed at Flanders Field in Belgium. As a young teen exchange student in 1952 I became aware of the immensity of these deaths as the driver there to the chaplain to the princes, P. B. ("Tubby") Clayton. We returned to the graveyards -- many hundreds of thousands of crosses passed by -- and looked in at a preserved trench where deaths had occurred by a kind of madness in which one side would prepare an attack with a military bombardment which had to be halted when the attacking troops entered the no man's land of blood and gore at which point the opponents would begin the slaughter with machine guns. None would make it across and those wounded in the upper arms would be sent to walk back to the hospitals behind the lines, those with leg wounds would be carried back, and those with body injuries would be left with a canteen of water to die. Junior officers led the charges and were the first targets to die. There were no anti-biotics then and only scorching might halt the infections.

This war was only a quarter century away from my experience, but it made me -- and Europeans generally -- aware of the horrors of war. No such consciousness seems to have occurred to our draft dodgers, Bush and Cheney.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net