Peace and War in the Heartland - Veterans Stories - A001

You served as a naval officer. You’ve seen it firsthand but believe that you were “bainswashed by a culture of war”

At age 17 I went to go the US Naval Academy. As I reflect on it, I really was “set up” to make the choice. It was truly a “no brainer”. Along with many of my classmates of Stillwater High School, I joined the National Guard at age 15. We were juniors in high school, motivated by the $3.00 we received for the monthly drills and the example of our fathers who had served in the 1st world war or brothers/sisters who served in the 2nd world war. We were ten or eleven years old when WWII began. The movies, radio and newspapers glorified war and portrayed Germans and Japanese as legitimate objects of hate. With hardly a pause, Communism, condemned by our churches and government, became the object of hatred and the enemy of the endless “cold wars” of Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Latin America.

I’m seventy-eight. I’ve lost classmates from high school and the U.S. Naval Academy to war and witnessed the physical and mental illnesses war has caused many others. War is the enemy of all mankind and I detest it. It is caused by power and greed and benefits only the powerful and the greedy. Really, who are the terrorists?