You’ve probably heard that quote before a million times. You’ve probably been hearing it a lot recently on the news and from your friends because of the terrible things that the Russians are doing to mothers and fathers and children in the Ukraine.
The quote comes from William T. Sherman. He was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and he knew what he was talking about. He commanded soldiers in some of the bloodiest conflicts in that war. He saw soldiers and civilians die in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and North and South Carolinas. The worst of the killing was probably in Georgia where he and the Union Army followed a “scorched earth” policy that resulted in the destruction of everything from Atlanta to Savannah. As he marched to the sea, he destroyed military bases, industrial facilities, and civilian property.
Let me give you another quote from Sherman: “War is cruelty.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about Sherman’s quotes recently.
Starting in the morning and throughout the day, I watch the news about the war in Ukraine. I see the people running from explosions. I see hospitals and schools and hotels being blown up. I see masses of refugees in train stations struggling to find some way out of the hell that Ukraine has become. I see mothers frightened, children weeping, fathers looking lost and hopeless. I see them being killed too.
War is hell and cruelty.
I watch this on the news and hear about it from my friends, and then I turn back to the things I usually do. I have toast and cereal for breakfast, I step out into the garden and do some wedding, I go to the supermarket to buy some groceries that I’ll need for tomorrow and the day after. My life continues as it always does. Putin’s war against Ukraine is just a momentary pause in my day. Mostly I feel there’s nothing I can do about the terror and the destruction and the cruelty and the hell that the Russians have unleashed on the mother and fathers and children of Ukraine.
The war is constant for those people, and from what I know about how the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Russians affected my parents and the millions of Poles who survived that war, that suffering will never end.
War is hell for the victims of war. For the rest of us who watch it on TV, it’s just a pause in our regular routines.
We can talk about how terrible all this killing is. We can send donations to Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross. We can write to our government representatives to do something to stop this war. We can pray for all this killing to end.
But none of that is enough.
Nothing is enough.
War is hell and cruelty.
— my latest column for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America.
https://dziennikzwiazkowy.com/felietony2/wojna-to-pieklo-war-is-hell/
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