[L,TOWM]

won a metal,

Gold, Silver, or Bronze?

watched his friends blow up and witness atrocities committed against civilians.

Oh Yeah, The big shock that every young man has upon discovering that war aint't a John Wayne movie. Only if they are unfortunate enough to be a participant. Maybe your uncle would have FELT better about the "rightness" of WWII if he had been cleaning up after the atrocities committed upon civillians in Akron, OH or Sacramento, CA. So which would you rather have had happen John? Nobly fighting against invasion like the Russians, or taking a can whoop ass to other places?

Your answer will be enlightening. Civillians get killed on a pretty regular basis when you are having armies do their thing in your own territory.

He hopes God will forgive him, and finds little comfort in legalism

Legalism? John, you've gone off the deep end.

[JohnGalt]

He was a drafted medic, so I guess his perspective, that whole 'first do no harm thing' would cause him to have an introspective view rather than free himself to simply accepting the gubmint's propoganda.

I don't know for sure but I think he came to the same conclusion General MacArthur did upon reflection:

"The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."

- General Douglas MacArthur

August 17, 1957