wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] What has happened to my country? Commentary by Rev.

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #9031 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05624
Nov. 22, 2005

What has happened to my country?
 
Commentary
by Harold Kurtz
Senior Associate, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship

 PORTLAND, OR - Lately I feel like a stranger in the United States. 

	I am a remnant of what has been called "the greatest generation," but
it's not the thinning ranks of my generation that has me feeling lost and
confused.  It's the debate about torture that has been swirling around me for
months. I never imagined such a debate in my country. 

	A single statement from the executive branch that torture is
forbidden everyplace, all the time, by every agency and under all
circumstances, would stop all such talk immediately. There might be an
element of danger in that stance, but virtue knows any sacrifice is worth a
better future. We need to end the torture debate so the world will know that
my country would never become as the enemy.
  
     My father fought in World War I in Europe. He was a quiet man who never
talked about his service in France, but my mother's photo of him in his
uniform is etched in the minds of his children.

	When World War II broke out, we were five boys and a little sister.
The three oldest enlisted within days of the declaration of war. As number
four, I enlisted as soon as my 18th  birthday rolled around.  Three of us
went into the Army Air Force for pilot training; one joined the 5th Armored
Division. 
 
	My youngest brother, Dudley, graduated from high school a couple of
years later.  Dad and mom did not stand in the way of his enlisting, although
they could have gotten a deferment for him to help on the farm. Dud didn't
want cold, mud and tents, so he joined the Navy.
  
	When his orders came to report for duty, what was left of the family
climbed into the car and took him to the train station - his grandfather, a
great aunt, his little sister and mom and dad. They all returned to our home
to stay overnight.
  
	Dad went immediately to the end of the backyard and dug up the
basketball standard that had stood for many years over a dusty plot where
running feet had trampled out every living thing.  It was too painful to see
it standing there, silent and unused.

     After supper and evening visiting, mom and dad turned their bed over to
company. They took the boys' room; mom crawled into Dud's lower bunk, and dad
climbed into the top one.  Finally, in the dark, alone, mom was able to shed
the tears that she had held back all day. Dad heard her crying and climbed
down. They slept wrapped in each other's arms in Dud's empty, single bed. Mom
wrote later, "When the morning came, our courage returned."

      It was common then for families to display in a window a small white
flag with blue stars, one for each son serving in the war. Mom couldn't find
a flag with five stars on it to replace the previous one, so she took a blue
crayon and colored on it a fifth star. Years later, when family memorabilia
was divided up, the four older brothers awarded that flag to Dud as his
keepsake. It was a silent reminder of our parents' sacrifice.

	Dud ended up on a minesweeper in Japanese waters. The brother in the
ground forces landed with the 5th Armored Division, on D-day plus four, and
fought clear into Germany until VE day. Half of the soldiers in his unit were
killed or wounded. The other three of us were Air Force pilots in Europe.

      One day there was a knock at the door of our farmhouse. Mom looked out
and saw the rural mail carrier's car stopped at the mail box. She was afraid
of its meaning. It was the custom of those carriers to hand-deliver
registered letters from the government. My brother Merle had gone down in his
P-51 and was missing in action. Good news came within the month: He was a
prisoner of war, alive. He would be imprisoned for 11 months.

      As we served and as my parents waited, we all felt strongly that we
were fighting an evil - an evil regime whose vicious tactics we would never
employ. We acted on values that we could be proud of.
 
	I flew with the Troop Carrier Command. On return flights after making
deliveries to the front, we would stop at field hospitals and pick up the
wounded. We arranged bunk-like stretchers on both sides of the plane to carry
as many as possible, and delivered those critical wounded to the base
hospital. Friend and foe alike. No one even asked.
  
	I was also trained as a glider pilot. When the army needed to jump
the Rhine River, I landed with a glider-load of airborne troops behind the
German lines. We fought them for a strip of land needed for a pontoon bridge.
We rounded up hundreds of POWs. When the area was secured, low-flying B-24s
dropped "para packs" of ammunition and food from their bomb bays. As we
fought the Germans outside our perimeter, we shared our K-rations with the
POWs inside.
   
       As the war in Europe ended, we flew out our prisoners. They were a
skinny, battered and beaten lot. We also flew out forced laborers who were in
worse shape. However, what seared my soul was the sight of survivors of the
death camps - walking skeletons, hollow-eyed, with barely enough strength to
climb up the steps into our planes. I knew then that I could never be a
pacifist, for such evil must never be given a free hand to rule the world.

       What has happened to my country now? I am mystified by the continuing
debate about torture. In the country I and my brothers fought for, torture
wasn't even mentioned as a possibility - that was the enemy's tactics. That's
part of the reason they were the enemy.

	I am an evangelical Christian. Jesus tells us to eliminate our
enemies - by making friends of them.

       Back on the farm, the harvest of 1944 was very difficult. Dad, Mom and
little sister Joyce were alone. Meanwhile, the United States was finding it
hard to keep and feed all the German POWs in camps in Europe.  They started
bringing prisoners to the States in returning troop ships.  

	A camp was established near our home in eastern Oregon. Word was sent
out that farmers could hire willing prisoners as farm laborers. They would be
brought to the farms by guards, and the farmers would pay a daily wage. Most
prisoners were delighted to have something to do, and especially to be paid
for their work. Dad decided to use their help with the harvest.
  
	Three or four POWs would be brought to the farm each day. Dad and his
prisoners worked well together even without a common language. The prisoners
brought their lunch. But dad and mom were concerned about those young
Germans; mom worried about their diet. Every day at noon, she cooked up a big
pot of stew or soup to add to their lunch. I am sure that as she stirred the
soup, she prayed that someone would care for her POW son.
 
	My dad must have had similar thoughts. One day when it was cold and
windy and mom was gone, dad talked the guard into letting the prisoners into
the house for lunch, although it was against regulations. Inside, one of the
prisoners saw my dad's guitar sitting in a corner and asked if he could play
it. The prisoners sang a song they must have learned from their guards:
"Don't Fence Me In!" 

	In that same bitter winter in Germany, my prisoner brother was put in
a railroad cattle car and shipped south. Half of his fellow POWs died on the
way.

	I am certain all of those German prisoners who worked on our farm
went back to Germany not as enemies, but as friends.
  
       What has happened to my country? How can my country be debating the
merits of torture? Why has my country lost the will to make friends out of
its enemies?

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to
pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or
pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org

To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to
pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org