Tuesday May 30, 2006 The Glory of War

I was watching “Band of Brothers” series on television yesterday. It's a series made for tv about a group of young men preparing for and participating in World War II. It follows their actions and their reactions throughout the war and also interviews the real men in their seventies and their memories. I realized that these were the young adults of my youth who had returned from war and were trying to establish their lives and families at the time I was a young boy. Most of them are now in their seventies and eighties or have already passed on. I remember them when they were just starting out as fathers and beginners in the workforce. They were my scout leaders and they were the younger men in the PTA. They were the young leaders in the church. Their time has almost passed now and their generation is leaving us. They were an exceptional group of people. They had lived through the depression of the 1930s and survived World War II and the Korean War and had tried their best to make the world a safer place for all of us. They fought for their ideals and kept the faith. The march of generations continues and they are now the old men just as the survivors of earlier wars have passed on before them and the survivors of the Vietnam War are now getting closer to retirement.

Wars continue to happen and young men continue to die.
We can't seem to learn from our mistakes.
Our leaders can't seem to be able to negotiate peace, only war.

All the graves of all the young men from all the wars are peacefully laid out in neat rows continuing on forever while the young men who had so much to live for become distant memories and characters in television shows.