BELIEF IN A HIGHER POWER

            Campfires flickered on both sides of Pipe Creek.  Johnny Reb yelled out from his side of the creek, “Hey, any of you Yankee boys got some coffee you want to trade?”

            A voice boomed back, “Sure enough if you got tobacco.”

            Colloquies between rash boys in blue and gray were not uncommon during lulls just before battles.  Although swaggering contemptuously like roasters in a ring, to dishonor a fair trade with the enemy was a cowardly act.  Honor on both sides was paramount. 

            They met unarmed half way in the knee-deep creek, sizing each other up, the moonlight reflecting off the water.  Johnny Reb’s kepi slouched jauntily to one side of his head, light brown hair hanging over big, pink ears.  His blue eyes met the brown eyes of the Yankee who wore his kepi squared.  They were of a similar age and height, three inches below six feet, and parity in weight, a raw 175 pounds.  The Yankee was in need of a shave, his dark beard bristly.  Johnny Reb was trying to grow a mustache and a Billy-goat beard on the end of his chin.  Neither boy had yet reached twenty. 

            “Where you from?” asked the boy in blue. 

            “Virginia,” he replied, “a little town near Richmond.  Where you from?”

            “Ohio, a little town up by Lake Erie.”

            While chatting the cockiness slackened as they became acutely aware of the things they had in common. And so it went with such encounters, trades that were excuses to appraise the foe. Each had a Mom, Dad, siblings and a hunting dog. It wasn’t long until there didn’t seem to be anymore to say.  About to turn away, the Yankee boy said, “Rumors are there will be a battle near Gettysburg tomorrow or the next day.”

            “Guess I heard the same rumor,” replied Johnny Reb, squaring his kepi.  “You take care now, Bobbie Lee don’t like to lose.”  There was no belligerence or bravado in his words.  “Is Ulysses here abouts?

            “Not likely.  But George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac are well up to the task.  You be careful too Johnny Reb.”  They then sloshed their way back to the campfires, not so cocky and not so ready to kill. 

            Johnny Reb was cut down by cannon fire charging up Cemetery Ridge. The Yankee boy took a minnie ball in his left knee and lost the leg.  When the Battle of Gettysburg was over, the battlefield was littered with thousands of corpses, gray and blue. It was the most costly battle of the Civil War for both sides. 

            The Gettysburg battle involved 172,000 men (Lee 75,000, Meade 83,000) 51,000 casualties (Lee 28,063, Meade 23,049) and 5,000 dead horses, and they were good horses – dumb brutes slaughtered with their gray and blue riders.

            Between 618,000 and 700,000 American boys died in the Civil War.

            Johnny Reb and the Yankee boys in blue fought on the same side at Belleau Wood.  Young Marines all, stopped the German counter offensive.  This time it was rifles not muskets, the tools of war had become more sophisticated and deadly.  It took the young Americans 20 dreadful days to halt the Germans at the cost of 9,727 casualties, 1,811 of which were KIA.   1918 was not a good year for young American boys.

            The causalities in World War I tallied 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded.

            There was no honorable trading with the enemy on the Japanese held islands of Tarawa, November 1943.  Johnny Reb and the Yankee boys, clad in jungle green had to wade ashore in the waist-deep surf while being cut down by ruthless Japanese machinegun fire.  Hundreds perished before reaching the beach. It was one of the most bloody, fierce and costly battles of the Pacific – resulting in nearly 3000 causalities.  But the Japanese boys fared worst.  Of the 4700 defenders only 17 survived. 

            Tarawa was to epitomize the Japanese resolve to fight and die in the Pacific as Marines who stormed the beaches of Guadalcanal, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the other Japanese held Islands would find out - the hard way.

            World War II was the war to end all wars.  While the Marines were battling by islands in the Pacific the Army landed at Normandy and fought their way through the Bulge on their way to the Rhine – spilling young American blood all the way.

            The causalities in World War II are almost too much to comprehend, over 60 million killed, involving so many countries and ethnic races I feel unworthy to count.  According to Wikipedia there were 418,500 American fatalities in World War II, 36,516 at Korea, 58,159 at “Vietnam, 382 at the Gulf War and so far 5,491 in the War Against Terror.  So many, so damn many young lives …

                The slaying of so many young men left a surplus of young women.  But after each war it only took a decade for Mother Nature to bring back a parity in the number of boys and girls.  For me, it is evidence of a Higher Power.  Mother Nature obviously has no power over the prevention or outcome of wars, even though, as was the case during the Civil War, both sides prayed to the same Higher Power for the destruction of the other.  But when it comes to the perpetuation of the species, like a loving Mother, She is there. 

            “Oh yeah, Llewellyn, how about the passenger pigeon?”

            An interesting question and maybe the subject for another blog, “Man vs. Mother Nature.”