Reflecting on the Roots of My Pacifism

This is a blogged copy of a Facebook Note I composed a couple years ago. I'm making a duplicate copy here in the event it gets lost or unavailable should I leave Facebook or vanish for some other reason. 

No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.

John Updike said that. And he’s not the first writer with that insight. Gore Vidal entitled a memoir Palimpsest based on the idea that most of life is a recapitulation of what we experience during our early years. This is not to say we stop learning as we age but that our earliest roots are our most formative. Nor is it an argument that there is no escape from early tragedy or trauma. Most comedians share dark early histories, and the vows of childhood clearly govern many adult lives, sometimes driving them to extraordinary success. (Our current president is a vivid example.)

My reflections this morning came to me listening to today’s Writer’s Almanac, one of radio’s little treasures by Garrison Keillor. The poet Wilfred Owen was born on this day in 1893 and his poem Dulce et Decorum Est appeared in my high school literature.

One of Owen’s most moving poems, Dulce et Decorum Est, which had its origins in Owen’s experiences of January 1917, describes explicitly the horror of the gas attack and the death of a wounded man who has been flung into a wagon. The horror intensifies, becoming a waking nightmare experienced by the exhausted viewer, who stares hypnotically at his comrade in the wagon ahead of him as he must continue to march.

My parents were children of the Great Depression and young men of my father’s generation were recruitment material for the Second World War. His older brother was old enough not to be conscripted and my father failed the physical due to having had rheumatic fever as a child which damaged his heart. But his younger brother, Oscar, was a casualty of the war at Anzio, Italy, a bitter loss for my paternal grandmother who died soon after, her death brought on, some said, by grief. For reasons I never learned, his personal revolver was given to my father as a keepsake for me in remembrance of my late Uncle Oscar. It was stored in a safe place but never fired, and I only saw it a few times when my father showed it to someone, handling it as though it was some kind of religious relic. 

Perhaps because of that family tragedy, my mother had strong feelings that I should never have anything to do with any kind of gun -- not even a BB gun. I did have a toy cap pistol but caps for toys were considered wasteful so I never played with it much. I recall “going hunting” with an uncle once, but the dogs found no raccoons, no guns were fired. That was my only actual exposure to firearms, except once when a teen with a shotgun blew the head off a river turtle before taking it home to be butchered. I don’t remember the gunshot as vividly as seeing him toss away the still-beating heart of the creature as he dressed the turtle. 

I entered college in the fall of 1962, just as the drama of that era was starting to unfold -- the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement, a resurgence of the anti-war movement and fears of a nuclear holocaust, escalation of the Vietnam conflict and a string of assassinations -- JFK, RFK, MLK as well as victims of civil rights violence. When I discovered Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker papers, read King’s letter from the Birmingham jail and began digging into the literature of the time, I was clearly on the way to becoming a conscientious objector.

I recalled my mother’s stories of having once met the famous World War One hero, Alvin York, who had claimed CO status when he was called but later changed his mind and was honored as a hero. Until hearing about him, I never knew the conscientious objector status even existed. Looking into that possibility, I learned there are two conscription classifications other than 1A. Those who object to participation in war are classified 1O and if drafted will be expected to fulfill their civic duty in some civilian capacity -- perhaps as hospital aides or some other position. 1AO is the conscientious objector in uniform who will always be assigned to the Army Medical Service Corps. (There were no COs in any other branch of service and all of us were sent to Ft. Sam Houston, Texas for modified training without weapons, but with heavy emphasis on emergency first aid. Weapons and hand-to-hand combat were optional for those wanting that for self-defense or to protect patients in their care.)

I learned that one’s draft status is determined by a local draft board tasked with furnishing candidates for recruitment. Having been in touch with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors I was prepared to navigate the necessary application forms obtaining that status. The form asked for specific personal examples validating my objections. I recall one question in particular if I was objecting due to “religious training and belief” which in my case, having been reared as a Southern Baptist, may have been questionable. Knowing that the only answer to that question was “Yes” I had conversations with my mother in the event of any investigation so she could explain how my “training and belief” included more than what was typical for Baptists. She had forbidden me to have any guns as a child and her father, who was a Presbyterian minister, had differing views about war service as well. In any case I was assigned that status and was over a year into active duty before I finally thought through my basic reasons. 

Like all young people a few years away from home I thought I had everything figured out. I had been in a university environment which had exploded the racism I had been spoon-fed all my life. I remember being shocked in a sociology class to learn that an African baby brought to the right environment in another country might grow up to become an engineer or a doctor. I had been taught that black people did not have that kind of learning capacity. I recall my surprise the first time I sat between two black student activists in the back seat of a car and noticing that they didn’t smell bad. I had grown up with the notion that black people had a peculiar body odor that was not their fault but was always there. It’s embarrassing even now to admit such things but it’s an undeniable part of my past. The imprint of white privilege is as indelible as skin color itself. Even in my thirties I caught myself saying something about “only three high schools” when I became old enough to enter high school -- and I suddenly realized that there were at that time five high schools in Columbus, Georgia, not three. In the days of segregation there were three high schools for white kids and two others for the black kids. And nearly two decades later, even having been part of the civil rights movement, I still had not internalized that fact. 

Getting back to my after-the-fact insight about becoming a conscious objector, I finally realized that I might very well have to kill someone else, either for my own protection or to protect someone else. When I was recruited I thought I had seen a big cross-section of humanity. But I didn’t have a clue. Military service attracts all sorts and conditions of people as nothing else can. I soon learned that there are plenty of people ready, able and willing to shoot to kill others -- as long as they fit the definition of “enemy.” In some cases they are eager to have that chance, even regarding that as a heroic, even patriotic gesture. In the course of conflict soldiers even learn to regard children as enemies -- which in many cases they actually are, either consciously or as innocent victims who may or may not realize they are delivering a improvised explosive device (IED). My final status justification was that should the day come I would personally be faced with making that decision myself, but not under the command of someone else. For me, taking another life is not a decision to be delegated. 

A few years after being discharged the My Lai Massacre case was in the news. That horrible event was for me all the justification I needed for having been classified CO. A whole group of enlisted men killed a village of mostly innocent civilians because they were under the orders of an officer to do so. Living now in an era of terrorist attacks on innocent victims no one can deny that kind of horrible tactic has become commonplace around the world. Along with others I watch in horror as growing numbers of otherwise good people grow numb to those tactics, and some even advance the idea that similar measures should become part of our own national defense, along with torture and other despicable variations of human depravity. 

After a lifetime of living as part of a minority, I am resigned to the fact that I will not live to see more constructive alternatives to war. That thought does not give me much happiness, especially as I see others who call themselves Christian advancing clearly sub-Christian aims and values. But when I step back from the edge of political chaos I see that the arc of history is on the side of what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. And that gives me hope.