Friday, December 7, 2012

War is Hell

In the news this morning is an article written by Elizabeth McIntosh.  She offered her story to editors of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin a week after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.  They judged the story too graphic and it did not run.  It is published for the first time today and you can read it here if your own paper doesn't have it.  Today is a good day to search the web for writings, photographs and films of our country at war.  Thanks to the internet the horrors endured by our armed forces are just a few clicks away. Last month, at a school in North Carolina, a first grader wrote a poem about her grandfather's experience fighting in our war in Vietnam.  The poem was to be part of an assembly recognizing Veteran's Day.  Perhaps she interviewed her grandfather, looked at his souvenirs, heard his stories.  In her poem she wrote, "He prayed to God for peace. He prayed to God for strength".  I have no doubt that her account is true.  In the hell of war many would do the same.  The school principal required her to remove the reference to God.  Read about it yourself.  I ask, must we be so politically correct that we cannot tell things the way they are?  Do we think that eradicating mention of God in public schools improves our children's understanding of history?  Do we expect them to believe that a scared and tired soldier would not petition a greater force than his enemy?  Nonsense.  The child did not seek to enshrine belief in God within her public school.  She wanted to tell the her grandfather's story.  Shame on the school.

No comments:

Post a Comment