Becoming a Man?

World War I

In the movie All Quiet on the Western Front, boys, straight out of high school, some even younger, are shipped off to save the “Father Land.” As they march in formation, three little boys are trailing behind, wishing and waiting their turn.

A young soldier begins his war experience traumatized by the shooting of innocent horses. He can’t stand the pain, crying out in anger, “Shoot the wounded horses…shoot them!”

Arriving in the battle field, their leader tells them, “I’ll teach you how to kill ‘Frenchies’.” When Paul (the main character) finally has the experience of killing a “Frenchie,” he is overcome with grief. Lying in a trench, next to the soldier he has attempted to kill, he has to listen to the man slowly die. Paul whispers, “I didn’t want to kill you. I never even met you before, face to face. If we threw all the bayonets, rifles, and grenades away, we could be brothers. But they don’t want us to know that.”

There is agony in the belief that they have been transformed from decent human beings to those who “can destroy and kill. When we see their faces, we become wild beasts…murderers. If your own father came…you wouldn’t hesitate to fling a bomb into him.”

Paul asks his leader, “Who is right?” “The one who wins,” his leader responds, saying that one country offended another. “That is the reason for war.”

World War II

It was 1943. My dad was drafted at the same time that his mother lie dying of cancer. He had only been at Fort Snelling, near his home, for a few weeks before coming home for the weekend. He went to his mother’s bedside; she looked up at him and said, “I suppose that we should say good-bye, because we probably never will see each other again.” She died the next day. My dad remembers crying in his bunk that evening. He says that his mother’s death “was a loss from which I sometimes believe I never recovered.”

These boys all had dreams and ambitions, and my dad was no different. Speaking of his dream of becoming a cartoonist, he remembers thinking, “When in the world am I going to get a chance to do this? The war is still going on, and none of us knew if we were going to return. It was so depressing.”

World War I

After a short convalescent leave from the war, Paul returns. His mother is dying, so from his bedroom, he writes her a letter. “I used to live in this room…all my things are here…but they no longer speak to me…for I am no longer what I used to be. I am a soldier…my business is not reading…it is killing. Out there, all men think as I do…there is no argument about the meaning of life because it has no meaning.

World War I…World War II. Boys sent off to become men––the men they never wanted to be.