ONE day I looked out over the countryside from the height at
Verdun. As far as eye could see, devastation! Only a few
stumps along the river Meuse where was once a forest. Only a
sea of mud where once were green fields and fertile farms. Only
a few white heaps of powder where once were villages. Barbed
wire with barbs as big as penknives, and trenches with lips as
scarlet as the poppies that bloomed once in pleasant, peaceful door-
yards. And there I made a vow. Another day at Château Thierry
they showed me a splotch on a white wall, where they said a little
child had been killed. And there I made a vow. Another time I
stood in what used to be the city of Soissons, saw the one wall of
the cathedral left standing, and looked out across the fields over
which the fury of battle had passed but a few days before, where
the blood had not yet dried on the sod, where the holocaust had
left behind its shattered chaos. And there I made a vow. I
marched with my fellow soldiers many a time behind a funeral
drum that told of another comrade to be laid below the ground.
And I renewed my vow. One day we stood to honor a young
soldier with our regiments drawn up in a great hollow square
while the generals pinned upon his breast the reward of war, the
cross, symbol of salvation. And then a few hours later I learned
the truth; the hero of the day had been badly gassed and the doc-
tors gave him just one month to live. And so again I made my
vow. At Montfaucon they told us how our own barrage had
fallen short and killed hundreds of our buddies with our own
shells. And once more I made a vow. On the Red Cross hospital
ship, Mercy, I saw more of what war had done to men: men with
eyes gone, limbs gone, minds gone. And there my vow renewed
itself. And then at last I saw my brother come home, after
fourteen months in the trenches, a shell-shocked, shattered husk
of the brave and gay young soldier who had enlisted and marched
away. And so my vow was sealed.

And that vow was not to kill Germans. For we who were in
the thick of the thing called war knew them as our brothers and
not as our foes. My vow was to kill this ugly thing called war
which had transformed the world into a theater of horrors. I

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