that aside, its a very moving, very sad list....all those young men....
I suppose every war has this equal long list of young men, lost.....
what does it do to a society when so many young men...young men who were adventursome, honorable,patriotic, etc are lost to their generation....that many fewer good men as husbands and fathers....
multiply that over all the wars, the the change in society has got to be very, very devastating...
because who is left at home?....particularly during the draft, there were the draft dodgers, the ones who escaped to college, ones who claimed one malidy after another.....
Brings to mind the epilogue of a book I read that detailed the horrendous losses Germany was suffering on the Eastern Front:
The scale of losses on the Eastern Front worried deeply the leaders of Nazi Germany, but there were many men in more humble circumstances who were also deeply concerned at the loss of so many future fathers, future leaders of their country.
One of these was a humble padre serving in a German mountain unit who had fought alongside his men throughout the long years of the war. Let his words of worry and concern be the epitaph to this war on the Eastern Front.
He wrote these words in the autumn of 1941, shortly after the battle of Uman and yet only 4 months after the start of the war.
“Today I buried some more of my former parishioners who have died in this frightful land.
Three more letters to write to add to the total of those which I have written already in this war.
The deleted names of the fallen are now more numerous in my pocket diary than the names of the living.
My parish is bleeding to death on the steppes of this country.
We are all going to die out here.”