Episcopal Press and News
A Day to Think about Wars
Episcopal News Service. February 14, 1991 [91046]
Nan Ross, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Arizona and editor of the Arizona Episcopalian
January 15. The day that separated peace and war.
January 15. My brother's birthday.
Jeff was 22 when he died. He left behind a family stunned and grief-stricken -- two parents, four sisters, and one grandmother. No more blue eyes or freckle-faced Tom Sawyer grin. No more swats with a dishtowel from and on the behind. No more bee-bopping around the living room after school.
Jeff, five years older than I, would often call me to duty as his jitterbug partner while American Bandstand blared on the television set or a 45 rpm record played. I loved it. Every time I hear Stay, Stand by Me or any song by Roy Orbison, I think of Jeff.
Aside from growing up as an army brat, very little pointed to a future fighting a war. As a teen-ager, Jeff wrote poetry, loved music, literature, and history, played tennis, and teased kid sisters.
He was different when he returned from basic training: all combat boots and fatigues -- real gung-ho military. He had enlisted, served in Okinawa, then Vietnam as a member of the first combat infantry unit to arrive there, and then back to the States. He entered Officers' Candidate School. He excelled: second lieutenant! Then he volunteered to go back to Vietnam: physically fit and proud as hell.
Jeff died three months later on June 22, 1967, along with most of his platoon of paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, on a hill near a place called Dak To in South Vietnam. That's all I know about how he died; that's all I want to know. But my father -- a career army colonel -- researched every detail of how his only son, his firstborn, died.
Jeff's body was buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery near San Francisco. His name is on the Vietnam War Memorial: I was able to see it, run my fingers across it, for the first time just two years ago, and I'm sure he approves of that extraordinary place. Jeff wasn't there to accept the Purple Heart and Silver Star medals for bravery he had earned. But the rest of us were. What a shame.
So it seemed terribly ironic that this past January 15 I had another war to think about. This time around I know what I think.
After Jeff's death, I finished high school and went on to college, where war protests, the Kent State tragedy, and POWs and MIAs were issues that confused me. How could I resist a war that my brother did his best for, lost his life for, dammit? I walked the campus, numb to the sights and voices that screamed, "End this horrible war!"
What would I do if I were a student today? I'd probably be out there hoisting a peace poster. Because in 1991 I think war is wrong, and the only thing we seem to have learned from the last one is to not turn our backs on the ones who are fighting it or their families at home. An improvement. But for me, not enough.
Each day, several times a day, as so many others do, I stop and pray for our men and women who are serving in the Middle East. I pray for our president. I pray for the Saudis, the Israelis, the Iraqi people. I pray that this war ends soon.
I have a right to question this war; wrapping coffins in American flags won't justify it. In my heart I know God's way of confronting evil is with love, not bombs and bullets. Yes, the Bible is full of wars and mighty Godfearing warriors. But then didn't God give us Jesus to show us how he intends, indeed yearns, for us to live?
As a Christian, am I not to follow the Gospel according to Jesus Christ? Where does the Gospel give killing other people as an option for working out our problems?
But for now it seems to me that we are stuck with a nightmare, an endless real-life Ninetendo game on a television screen where a monster has run off with the hand controls. And I have no control over it.