Dear Editor:
Many thanks to David Martin for his superb article in the Eastern Shore Post on the WWII encounter between Charles Brown of the U.S. Air Force and Franz Stigler of the Luftwaffe (“Random Facts,” June 11 and June 18). He relates an example of combatants recognizing the humanity of individuals forced by their countries to wage war.
There are many such incidents in history. Perhaps the most famous is the Christmas truce of 1914, when WWI combatants at multiple sites stopped fighting to bury their dead and simply to fraternize together.
In all cases, the combatant countries classified the incidents and forbade soldiers and officers to speak of them. Their attitude: What we all share as humans must not defeat such purposes as oil company profits, national belligerence, and the (totally discredited) concept that communism will take over the world.
My Veterans for Peace shirt carries a quote from President Eisenhower, who commanded Allied troops in World War II, the only war of my lifetime that was clearly justified. “I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
If only national leaders — including ours who sent troops to die in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — felt as Ike did.
Al McKegg, Onanock
