The Pittsburgh Press (December 4, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
The new breed
By Florence Fisher Parry
Look at the uniform of any man in the armed services, never mind the color, the cut, the insignia, the rank. That uniform designates a man who is being trained or who has been trained to kill.
Regardless of his work, however indirectly it bears upon actual combat, he is contributing to that one end – killing.
That is war. War means killing or being killed. And until we get that firmly planted in our minds, until we tear away all the pretty heroics and sentiment and other window-dressing, we are party to the most gigantic conspiracy that ever plagued the world – the conspiracy of making killing seem like something else.
The awful thing, the hopeless thing, is that the only persons who actually realize this are those who have come through combat, who have been through the fire and the hell, who have brushed close to death and seen their comrades die, smelt the stench, looked upon the obscenity as well as the terrible pity of death.
And never mind how many millions of these men there are, their number is still not enough to impress the civilian populations they later return to.
‘Safety’
Have you a son or husband whose job has been killing and who has done that job so well that he has somehow managed not to be killed thus far? Then you know that he has ceased to be one of you. He belongs to that other world. He is patient, attentive, polite, very kind. He answers you “Yes” and “No” and then suddenly without warning there is that wall between you – that line drawn, that divide, and he is on one side and you are on the other. There is nothing that you can do about it. You are a stranger to his world and he to yours.
You say to him:
Why did you refuse that nice assignment? Why did you turn your back to safety and certain reward? Don’t you know when your luck is spent? Can’t you see that you’ve earned the right to safety?
Then it is that he answers you: “Safety! Safety! Can’t you see that what you call safety is the most dangerous attitude in the world? You’re tired of this war, aren’t you?” he asks you. “You’re tired of being brave and sacrificial. You’re tired of the suspense of knowing your own to be in danger. You are ready for peace. You crave safety.”
He will say to you:
Don’t you know, don’t you know that it’s just that – that very thing that you are saying, feeling, wanting now, that is going to bring about another war? Can’t you see that the enemy’s only hope lies in your growing tired and fed up and willing to barter in order to secure your own son’s safety?
Yes, that’s what he’ll say.
For they have learned something not given any mortal man save him who has confronted death head-on and sidestepped him for the nonce. They have learned to accept the likelihood of death.
Acceptance
Let me tell it to you this way: I said to a fortress pilot who had survived those early suicidal missions over Germany: “What makes a man crackup – mentally, I mean? What makes him break? Fear? Too complex a nervous system? Strain? What?”
And he answered:
None of these, really. It is quite simple. For I have found that the men in the Air Force who break in combat flying are those men who have not been able to accept the fact of death; and those who do not break are those who have been able to accept it.
He said:
It’s as simple as that. Some men cannot give up the desperate dearness of life; so, when they face the prospect of losing it, the fact becomes intolerable. There is no out for them. So, they crack. Then there are these others. On some day, at some hour or moment, it suddenly comes over them that they cannot expect to live, and they are able to accept this probability, this certainty. And in the instant of their accepting it, they find themselves at peace – nerveless, strong, unbreakable.
So, I guess we civilian-minded, earthbound home-fronter had better just be quiet; not waste our breath when one of these men of this new, strange breed tells us or writes us that he’s going on into fresh danger.
Will there be enough of these, I wonder, to make the world safe, to ensure its safety? Or shall we lesser, baser, craven creatures, by our fears, our tears and war-weariness, cheat them again of the future they are so readily now dying for?