What Do We Know about War?

 

In November 1973, I went to Waterloo, Belgium, to see with my own eyes the battlefield where, on June 18, 1815, Napoleon met defeat. On that date, Europe, after more than two decades of revolution and war, entered a new era of what some might call peace; others, a period of localized conflicts. The continent was no longer a battlefield from the Atlantic to Moscow.

My visit to Waterloo took place exactly fifty years ago, at a time when World War II was still very much alive in the hearts, bodies and minds of those who lived it. It cast its shadow over the lives of those, like me, born in its aftermath. The most deadly military conflict in history ended May 8, 1945, V-E Day in Europe, and September 2, 1945, V-J Day, when the surrender of Japan became official. It is estimated that in the combined conflicts between 70 to 85 million people died.

At Waterloo, in one day, near 50,000 soldiers fell, wounded or killed in battle. In comparison, in the three days of the battle of Gettysburg, there were an estimated 10,000 deaths and 30,000 wounded, many of whom underwent brutal amputations.

My favorite war, or anti-war, novel is Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The 1929 novel is based on the author’s experiences as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I. The story’s narrator, Frederic Henry, is an ambulance driver, like the author. Frederic is injured by a bomb. He is hospitalized in Milan, cared for by Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, and they fall in love. By the story’s end, we understand Catherine is the bravest soldier of them all.

Agnes Von Kurowsky Stanfield (1892-1984), born in Germantown, PA. She is believed to be the inspiration for Hemingway's Catherine Barkley

In the novel’s first chapter, in a language close to poetry, Hemingway gives us the truth of war: when bombs fall, humans are reduced to their most elemental, blood, organs, limbs, with no more control over their destiny than a tree or a stone.

And as if war were not enough, cholera breaks out, and I quote here the chapter’s last paragraph, another powerful indictment of war: “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.”

Only 7,000. Only indeed, compared to the nearly 10 million military deaths and the 10 million civilian deaths of World War I. War remains an abstraction until the bombs fall on us.

But back to Waterloo. It was November, the plain was covered by low clouds, and there was a rainy mist in the air. My travelling companion and I climbed the Lion’s Mount, the artificial butte rising from the plain to commemorate the victory of the English and their allies. From the top, the mist was so thick, we could hardly see a thing. We climbed back down and hurried to a bus stop to wait for a bus back to Brussels.

When it finally arrived, it was empty except for an older couple. They smiled at us. We struck up a conversation. When we got off the bus at the same stop in the city, they invited us to their home.

I will never forget the time I spent with them.

They lived in the center of Brussels, in what to my American eye was a very old building. We climbed up steps to their apartment. Once inside, it was like a fairy tale. Everything glowed in soft light and I felt enveloped in gentle kindness. Even our porcelain teacups, so fine, were like embers in our hands.

We had tea, we stayed for dinner. In the space of one evening, we’d become a family, parents and children, protected by the power of love.

That’s when they showed us. They showed us the numbers tattooed in the flesh of their forearms. They’d been among the last transports to Auschwitz. They had survived.   

The entrance to the Auschwitz camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau

 

 I don’t know how many Holocaust survivors are alive in November 2023. A handful. In November 1973, I touched the Holocaust as our new friends warmly embraced us when we left their home late that night.

In December 1990 I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was living in Krakow, Poland, at the time. On that December day, icy snow was falling. My entire body was numb with cold. I went to the cafeteria in the Auschwitz camp, ordered a bowl of zupa grzybowa, mushroom soup. I had been alone in the camp and I had the entire dining room to myself. I have no words to describe the strangeness, the shame, of eating in that place.

Krakow is not far from the Ukrainian border. It is about 200 miles from the city of Lviv. Both cities were once part of the Austro Hungarian Empire. Lviv was a part of Poland at different periods in that country’s history until, in 1945, it became part of the Soviet Union. Today it is a city of independent Ukraine. At this date, it is estimated there are 500,000 dead and wounded in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.  

I have never been under attack, unlike my father. He escaped bombs and death in the Philippines in WWII, but he died too young to tell me about his experience. I remember April 30, 1975, the fall of Saigon, as if it were yesterday, but I have never directly experienced war. Nor were my ancestors the victims of the pogroms that are a fact of European history.

In Europe, the victims were the Jews. On October 7, 2023, Israeli Jews once again experienced the horror of a pogrom. This time it was perpetrated by the Hamas, within the borders of the Israeli state declared independent in 1948. This was three years after the end of WWII, which brought death to an estimated 6 million European Jews out of a population of 9.5 million.

The Israeli riposte to the Hamas attack has been devastating to the people of Gaza. Hamas wants to wipe Israel from the map. Israelis fight for their lives, killing thousands in Gaza, as public opinion around the world turns against them for what is considered a cruel and unjustified show of force.

All wars eventually end, as history demonstrates. We know the years, the dates, the number of victims, but the suffering belongs to those who have known war.