Mar. 20, 2003 - 19:15 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Question

"What is war Grandpa ?" he asked me. Such a young one to ask such a hard question. An adequate answer is almost impossible to give a questioning adult let alone a child.

War is triple plated thunder, earth shaking from huge explosions and trying to decompress from such things,or creeping gas, silent, deadly and implacable in its intent to kill. War is seeing your childhood best buddy turn into shredded meat and bone splinters, his life blood scattered wide.

War is being unbearably hot or cold and sometimes both within one day, with no real relief available. War is being hungry, the food unsatisfying.

War is being ordered to go, do things your sense of survival and decency tells you is suicidal and doing it as ordered the best way you can under the most ungodly conditions imaginable.

War is lying hurt, shocked and bleeding hoping that someone finds you in time to help. Hoping that some kind soul gives you a sip of water and wipes your brow with a cool damp cloth.

War is spending long days of holding a point only to retreat and later go back again while attempting to understand the meaning of your life in relation to all the madness about you.

War is seeing the folks, the little people whose only wish is to live a life of peace, with a full stomach, safe water and shelter from storm being shoved to and fro, diseased, cold/hot, hungry and wounded.

War is being suspicious of every living being not in your country's uniform and doubting some of those in that uniform are truly allied or an enemy in disguise.

War is being cut off from your battalion with no possible way to return to it.

And when the war is over and you come home, it may be that you are held in contempt and spit upon by your fellow man for serving your country. Being ignored by all the agencies that are supposed to aid the returning soldiers, your lingering illnesses disavowed as being caused by your service in the name of your country.

You or others in your group coming home if you are lucky to do so, but return just being a half a human, missing limbs, maybe a jaw and a brain damaged by shell fire or poison of some kind or another.

Those folks in Europe who have been torn by war in their own countries for centuries dread the very thought of war I think. They and often their forbears have been there and had that done to them, over and over again. Most recently in the former Jugoslavia.

The desert I think will not grow poppies in profusion like those that sprung from the shell plowed land of Flanders Fields.

Grandson, I wonder what symbol, what emblem will come from this action ? Nothing pretty as poppies that grew from bloodied soil I am sure. So what ? Maybe little hourglasses of desert sand with drops of blood spattered on them?

There was a Civil War Veteran, I think of the Union Army who put it quite aptly then and it probably is true more now than back then, he said, "War is Hell."

"What is Hell grandpa ?" he asked. "I don't really know grandson, I haven't been there yet although it seems I have approached it," was my answer. In my overheated mind I tried to find a multiplier that would give him a comparison between the two. Maybe the best answer on thinking it over would have been, "Grandson war is but a little section of hell on earth." Mea Culpa, there was no really satisfactory reply that I could think of. The last thing I could think of to say is, "That is a good Question" . . . . . . . .

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