A scene like this makes me feel a bit ill.

Every cross is over a coffin, and in every coffin is a dead man. All those men, nearly all young; they had lives ahead of them, and they could have loved others and been loved, been happy and made others happy. All that was lost in an instant when a bullet came the wrong direction.

This is just one cemetery; there are countless others. Half a million Americans died in the war. (Which was relatively few compared to the USSR and the UK, but that's as may be.) All those men gone, leaving crying women at home. All that potential vanished in an instant.

If there had been no war and all those men had lived, how much different would this country be?

It doesn't make me feel as ill as does reading about some of the butchery in WWI (e.g. Verdun) but it still hurts. The only thing that is any consolation, any comfort at all, is that these men didn't die for nothing. And many men did come home; some maimed, some broken, every one changed, but most OK, to return to their lives and to make a future for themselves and for us.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 08:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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