A Sorry Swap
The human cost of the war was at times overwhelming. A chaplain walked through a new graveyard in the Philippines lined with thirty-five hundred freshly painted white crosses. He looked at the ages of the fallen soldiers buried there and noticed that practically every one was eighteen or nineteen years old:
For this, some poor woman labored for nine months, brought the child into the world, took care of every need, watched him grow up, proud, and this is the way it ends? There’s got to be a better way.521
Another chaplain received many answers to his letters of condolence. Most were gracious and thankful for his help. A few were bitter, as this one from the parents of an only son killed on Iwo Jima:
Did he die quick, with a rifle bullet or was he blown all to h ___ with a mortar or torn up by shrapnel? Did he last long enough to see the flag go up on Suribachi?… We spent eighteen years raising this boy and it took eighteen months for the Marines to finish the job, and we have an engraved certificate to show that he died for liberty. You will have to admit that it is a…sorry swap.522
This letter may not have been typical, but it was honest. Other parents and loved ones may have accepted their losses more graciously, but their pain was just as deep. It is a natural and a good thing to glorify our sons and daughters who have fallen in wartime fighting for our nation. We rightfully consider them heroes. It is a good thing also to understand and remember the cost of this sacrifice. Mothers, fathers, spouses, siblings, communities all suffer losses that are at times almost impossible to bear. These tragedies shatter lives and affect untold future generations. While condemning war and the human failures that cause it, we pray to see that day envisioned by the prophet Isaiah:
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
—Isaiah 2:4