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But if it were to be them what would they do ? Orders are orders. They could always call poppy and I suppose that would be their ace in the hole. They didn't have to be serious. What has it got to do with me ? Such are the complications of guilt.
I remember coming back to Illinois from Europe and talking to one of my old grade school friends. He thought the war was great. Said it created a lot of jobs, a "lot of jobs around here now". How could people like this be found guilty of anything. They had no understanding whatever of the meaning of life. For all practical purposes they were un-practically not alive, a lullaby life. The criminals were at the top. However being at HQs Army, there were no bad people. They were all just doing a job. There was no war then. But even so they would simply be incapable of ever connecting themselves to any actual evil. My commanding officer's theory of war was, "keep your head down and you won't get hurt".
These people were not-that alive to realize what death was. Still the question on a lot of people's minds in my circles, was how to stop the war. The more alive and passionate they were, the more they understood the death machine, the crazier they were depicted and seemed to be to the sleepers. Of course the World War Two and Korean war generations simply transferred their war enemy frenzy to the gooks. It was the kids who had missed out on the Korean War and all the constant anti-communist diatribe dribble that were against the Vietnam war. Somebody was to blame. I discovered that I could not assign personal degrees of guilt, especially at a distance.
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