A GUNNERS PRAYER

 

A GUNNERS PRAYER

I have been thinking of war - its effects and wondering how to prevent a recurrence of the scourge of mankind.

You in America are the luckiest people in the world - the richest peop[le in the world and the freeest people in the world - at least among the great powers.

Europe, because of war, is a smouldering ruin. Everyone knows the story of Hitler. Everyone knows that millions have starved to death, millions have been slaughtered mercilessly, and many more millions are homeless and hopeless. If people are to be considered "living" they have to have something to live for; some ideal - some motivative force. Revenge is a driving force - but not something to make life worthwhile. After the lust for revenge has been satisfied, it is empty indeed. For instance, all some people live for today is to see Hitler dead, but that won't restore sons and daughters, wives, husbands, or sweethearts. That won't restore your job, your home, your small business or your self respect. The blight of War Doesn't Leave When Peace Comes. Its mark is left on every person participating in it. The men and women who go to war are different men an women when they return and sometimes the homes they left have changed also.

Many boys, when they entered the service, had a clean mind and a clean body and in his mind during his life he had desires, hopes, and ambitions and as he grew older a girl came along who seemed to fit right into that plan. This boy was no Casanova or man about town. He wanted everything life could offer and to him that meant a large share of happiness and to that end he would exert all his energies. He would work hard and perhaps open a little business of his own. He would marry the most wonderful girl in the world and they would have more fun - more fun than any other two humans in existence. Besides being his wife, she would be his advisor, his companion, and his best buddy. He wasn't the type of fellow to be satisfied with a drab existence. He would have his own home, his own car, and he, his wife and children would live comfortably - at least - better than that if they were lucky.

What happens to this boy when the war looks in and interrupts his dream? He has had a happy life without heartache. War? That is some remotely familiar thing they write books about and make movies of. War is man's business and if you are a man you know what is expected of you. You think of death - little realizing the real tragedy is not death - but the scarred living - scarred mentally and physically. Everyone thinks of death when the men go off to war - but few men in the service fight the war. We count our casualties in physical hurts - but every combat soldier is a casualty - every one.

Cynicism and the loss of ideals is the most common. The army breeds it - the war breeds it. Hundreds of times I have heard one-time idealistic boys exclaim, "I have no respect for women anymore." As they lose respect for women they also lose the right to a respectable woman. Married or single, they are in the army and they do what the mob does - they think like the mob thinks.

Hundreds of times I have heard them say, "twenty years from now there will be another war; wars are inevitable." They are tired and have thrown in the towel when the fight has not yet begun. To accept war as part of the price for life is to invite another disaster instead of trying to seek out the causes and rectify them.

I am just a layman, just an onlooker in this vast and turbulent world but there are things that even I can see that cry out to be rectified and the problem belongs to all of us. As members of humanity, everthing about the human race concerns us directly. Economists will tell us that the productivity capacities of the world permit every human to live in luxury. If that is the case, and it is, it is obvious that there are serious maladjustments somewhere, but rectifying the problem of supply and demand isn't all there is to preventing war. The education of the ignorant masses who are so easily and fanatically led because they haven't got a mind of their own, to think for themselves with, is also a major step. Educate them so the realize the equality of mankind. Educate them so they realize that no one is their superior and no one inferior to them.

Perhaps in that way, the greatest maladjustment of all can be rectified; the different classes of society. Even Americans are prone to making "Tin Gods" out of other people, but at least to them it isn't that the feel inferior so much as curiosity about the person that makes them clamor for autographs and tear their clothing for souvenirs. There are people - I am one of them - who wouldn't walk across te street to goggle at a King in curiosity - because people might think I thought him a great man - or superior to myself. The only great men are those that contribute something to mankind - not those who are parasites - suckling their livelihood without any material contribution.

Those are a few of the things that I as a bystander have seen and I stand here - ignorant and with tied hands, praying that I could do something about it and in this message that I have written is a motive force - an ideal to give some of those wrecked lives something to do to make all their suffering worthwhile. Don't let it happen again. Anyone who can visualize what I have so clumsily tried to explain can help by bringing these problems before the attention of the world and not letting these problems fade into oblivion before a solution is reached.

Written in the heat of combat, 1944 by Wesley C Greayer - poor sod.