Ron Paul - Swords into Plowshares

None of my brothers were old enough to be drafted; two uncles and several cousins were. Though my dad had three brothers, only one was drafted since the others were permitted to continue to operate the family dairy business. His drafted brother served in the Seabees on the island of Saipan in the Pacific. My mothers brother was also drafted. He was sent to Africa. Both returned after the war. Neither one saw combat.

I well understood what going to war meant.

Several members of the Lutheran church my family attended were drafted and sent to Europe. One of them was Andy Jablonski, a close friend of the family and a burly, energetic type who was about to be married. Andy became a paratrooper. My brothers and I knew him as a special friend. Another individual from our church, Bill Tellhorster, the oldest of eight children and the only son, became an infantryman.

D-Day, June 6, 1944, was a big event for just about everyone in the countrya do or die event for the outcome of the war. The bad news of thousands of deaths and injuries arrived rather quickly. But the invasion was heralded as a great victory.

Andy and Bill were both killed in the invasion. The invasion was a promising and sad event for our family, our friends, and our church. This was only one of the many similar stories for so many people throughout the war.

My family was mainly of German descent. Two great-aunts and their families still lived in Germany during World War II. We as children were taught to pray for their safety. Yet it was the US military that was trying to kill them. Families fighting and killing each other made no sense to me even at that young age. Yet it is characteristic of many wars. This senselessness of brothers fighting brothers was especially frequent in our own Civil War.

My twin cousins were drafted as well and sent to fight in Germany. Both returned home safely. One of them, Pfc. Arthur P. Kaufman, was captured. Toward the end of his confinement he was threatened with execution before being rescued by invading Soviet troops at the end of the war. He kept a diary from the day he was captured on Dec. 22, 1944 until his release on May 23, 1945two weeks after V-E Day. Although he described rough conditions, he was treated reasonably well. For instance, shortly before his release, he was hospitalized and treated for dysentery by a doctor and given medication. Reviewing this incident caused me to think about prisoners of war these last 25 years of nearly constant wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Essentially, there have been no prisoners taken. As the Iraqi forces marched home at the end of the Persian Gulf War, many were indiscriminately killed by our pilots. Take no prisoners must have been the orders given. Individuals incarcerated and even tortured at Guantanamo and other detention sites operated by or in cooperation with the US purposely were not termed prisoners of war. That classification would have invited the rules of the Geneva Convention to be followed, with torturing prohibited.

In 1961, as an intern at the Henry Ford Hospital, I worked with a German doctor about my age. I couldnt help but think to myself: Just a few years ago his relatives and mine were trying to kill each otherbecause their governments told them to do so. And today were in medical training together learning how to save liveswhat an irony! I thought to myself, War is such a waste! It made no sense to me then; nor does it today.

As a child I was not aware of the deliberate US choice to saturation bomb cities including Dresden and Hamburg while ignoring the many efforts through international agreements to prevent targeting civilians. The Dresden bombing occurred in February of 1945 when the impending defeat of Germany was clear. One justification for the bombing was to send a message of our strength and determination to our ally the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the Cold War.