Which reminds me....
In WW2 my grandfather, a country doctor in the best Dr. "Bones" McCoy
tradition, enlisted and was assigned to a ship in the Pacific Fleet. He
had a wife and two young children, but he felt it was his duty to do what
he could--it was (comparatively) easy to train infantry, I suppose, but
harder to train doctors in the numbers needed. So he went where duty
called him, and he never came back.
I believe Dr. Julian O. Long gave his life for his country.
On Mon, 28 May 2001, Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
>
> I think it's fairly appropriate to use the phrase "gave their lives" when
> soldiers die in action. Not from some philosophical point of view, but
> because on the whole soldiers tend to be young and male, full of
> testosterone and propaganda. It might be good propaganda (Hitler's evil
> and a threat to democracy!) or bad, but unless the soldier is a pacifist
> forced to the front lines at gunpoint, I suspect he's made a mental
> adjustment somewhere along the way in which he commits himself, and his
> life, to the effort.
>
> That's not to say the soldier wants to die or that he seeks death. Just
> that the glorious sacrifice for patriotism meme is very, very strong once
> it has been embraced.
>
> I can't think of many other things that would prevent an army of otherwise
> intelligent people from revolting against their officers en masse and
> running the *away* from the bloody machine guns.
>
> Marvin Long
> Austin, Texas
>
>
>
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
