11/11/09 11:00, by Lorraine, Categories: Everybody , Tags: lessons rom a combat veteran, non-violence, pacifism, peace

We've called it Veterans Day for now over 50 years but I know today as Armistice Day. I know it from the French soldier's engraving on the 105mm howitzer shell that my Great Aunt Harriet brought back from rhe war; The Great War.

Aunt Harriet is the only veteran of combat I have known well. She and her nursing classmates at Louisville's Norton's Infirmary, graduated early in 1918 and shipped to France. She served as a surgical nurse in a field hospital which would now be called a MASH unit. She returned to march in the victory parade down New York's Fifth Avenue.

As a pre-teen during World War II I learned from her the confusing concept that the mutilated German solidiers were no different in their needs and rights to compassionate care than the French, Brit and even U.S. soldiers. It was from her that I first learned the equally confusing concepts of pacifism and the immorality of glorification of war.

Would that all of our combat veterans return transformed to renounce violence and to serve the oppressed. Soon there would be no more "Universal Soldiers." And PTSD might be laid to rest once and for all.

I will wear poppies today and reflect.

2 comments »

2 comments

Comment from: rrandall [Member]

Thanks, Lorraine, for your thoughtful post which reminds us of what this day originally celebrated: the end of war! Too bad we've lost that vision. Even the peace movement has bought into the glorification of soldiering.

Thanks also for the link to my all-time favorite song. Is that Joan King singing "Universal Soldier"?

I just returned from a weekend with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. While soldiers give their bodies as weapons of war, others give their money in the form of taxes, and that's not the way we put an end to war either. If we want peace, we're going to have to stop paying for war. Check out www.nwtrcc.org.

Thanks again. I'll be in Columbus next weekend for the School of Americas Watch events to close down the place where militarism is taught to soldiers of other countries.

11/11/09 @ 17:16

Comment from: Lorraine [Member]

Hello Robert. So good to hear, though just knowing you and your folks are there is uplifting.

It is Joanne Steele singing Universal Soldier. It is from her album Homeplace.

I really hold moneyed enablers of war more responsible. I am reminded of the Inca youth who were plied with worship as "chosen ones." promised eternal paradise, then murdered. Not that much different from the youth of today, ours and theirs.

The "pro-life" people want their tax money preempted from women's health care on the basis of conscience. The same principle should certainly apply to war.

Blessings on your mission to Columbus..

11/11/09 @ 19:14

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