Tag Archives: civil war

Treasured Friends

I bade a sad farewell to some treasured old friends a little while ago.

I learned that a local bookstore owner would pay me fifty cents a copy for all my old books, which he would then re-sell to his customers to realize a small profit.

Like you, perhaps, I have purchased a large number of books over the years, both hard- and soft-cover varieties.  They’ve all been read once—some much more often—and those I wanted to keep were placed lovingly in one of several bookcases.  But, as we downsized to a smaller home, the day arrived when there was just no more room.

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Being one to whom books are almost living things, I couldn’t bear the thought of packing them away in musty cartons for storage, out of sight and soon forgotten.  Somehow, though, it seemed alright to pass them along to others who would enjoy them as I had.  So, over a number of weeks, I carried out the task of sorting and packing more than three hundred-and-eighty books.

I had acquired the habit years ago of writing my name and the year when the book came into my possession on the inside front cover of each one I read.  How delightful it was to browse them once again, as I sorted, lingering over memories associated with those many years.

There was a boxed set of Tolkien’s epic trilogy, Lord of the Rings, a gift from my brother in 1960; a biography of John Kennedy and a copy of the Warren Commission Report of 1965, when the shooting in Dallas was still a recent shock; several novels in a series about a modern-day knight-errant named Travis McGee—the first purchased in 1966 and its successors as each was subsequently published; a number of biographical works from the late 1970’s about such notables as Churchill, MacArthur, Lee and Jackson, and Trudeau (the elder); a Civil War story, After the Glory, perhaps my favourite novel; and, of course, dozens of others.

There were titles of a more recent vintage, too:  thrillers from such writers as Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, John Sandford, and Lee Child; more biographies of famous and infamous people—Ghandi, Mandela, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Jimmy Carter, Terry Fox; histories of significant events in my lifetime, dealing with the aftermath of the Great War, the great depression, the fall of Soviet communism, the rise of the Beatles, and the future impacts of technology.

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I had determined to be ruthless in my sorting, adamant about packing everything, unyielding in my determination to move all of them out.  Inevitably, however, there were some I had to keep (including the eight I’ve published, of course).  I’ve never been resolute about being resolute!

Anyway, in due course, I was finished.  Ten cardboard cartons, each the repository of hundreds of hours of private enjoyment, sat waiting for me to take them to the bookstore.  But I, despite my earlier resolve, was plagued by a great sense of loss, a sense of having betrayed a trust, a sense of abandoning something that had become a part of me.

And so, they sat for awhile—those cartons echoing with silent, accusatory voices of so many old friends—awaiting my decision as to their fate.

After several restless nights, plagued by remorse, I hit upon an idea.  An old pal of mine owns a cottage near Parry Sound, one unencumbered by the modern notion that such getaways must have access to the internet, telephones, and television.  Solitary pursuits are the order of the day in his idyllic retreat, and I gave him a call.

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“How’d you like to meet some new friends?” I asked him.  “They’d love to come and stay at the lake, and I know you’ll like them.”

It took some further explaining, naturally, but he came by the next time he was heading north, and we loaded the cartons into his SUV.  As he pulled away, I bowed my head, placed a hand over my heart, and mouthed a sad goodbye to those treasured old friends.  Dramatic, I know, but heartfelt.

However, I was greatly comforted by knowing I’ll be able to say hello to them all again and again each time I visit.  It brought an old ditty to mind—

Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver, and the other gold.

So, Who Won?

In all the history of warfare between nations, one of the adversaries has almost always been declared the winner.  In the Peloponnesian War, it was Sparta; in the Punic Wars, Rome; in the Norman Conquest, William of Normandy; in the War of the Roses, Edward VII of the House of Tudor; in the American War of Independence, the newly-formed USA; and in both the First and Second World Wars, Britain, France, the USA, and their allies.

On more than one occasion, ‘though, armed conflict has ceased with no winner declared.  In 1953, for example, an armistice brought fighting to an end between North and South Korea.  No peace treaty was ever signed; a demilitarized zone was created to separate the two countries.  Hostilities ceased, but a mutual hostility has continued to this day.

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That struggle on the Korean peninsula was not the only war fought between north and south armies.  Almost a century earlier, the USA endured its Civil War; southern forces, the rebels, opened hostilities with an assault on Fort Sumter in 1861, and ended the fighting with a formal surrender at Appomattox in 1865.  In this war, the northern forces defending the union were the winners.

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(In a strange twist, and unlike almost any other conflict, where defeated leaders have been vilified by the victors, heroes from both sides in this war have been venerated by succeeding generations—Lincoln and Grant from the North, Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the South.)

The official history of these wars, and every other war, has been written by the victors.  And any attempt to counter their accounts has generally been ineffective in supplanting the approved versions.  We know who won because the winners told us.

It’s worth considering, however, if future wars will similarly boast clear winners and definite losers.  Or will everyone lose?

The world is presently on tenterhooks, wondering where the simmering tensions between North Korea and the USA will take us.  Whenever one side in a conflict is headed by a preening, egotistical, autocratic, and impulsive leader, we have a right to worry.  But in this case, both sides are thus afflicted, and both, to some extent, have (or are feared to have) access to nuclear weapons.

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It is an irony of diplomacy among nations that treaties and accords are signed by various and sundry allies in an effort to keep the peace.  But it is those same mutual-defence agreements that pull nations into war when one of the signatories is attacked from outside.  Secure in our North American fortress, Canada has never gone to war because she was attacked, but because she was bound to defend her allies who were.

There are no exact, universally agreed-upon figures, but in the First World War, almost 31 million military personnel from all nations were killed in action.  In the Second World War, nearly 25 million were killed.  In the Korean conflict, almost 1.2 million military personnel were killed.

Ask those deceased veterans who won the wars.

Civilian casualties are another matter.  Almost 7 million lost their lives in WWI, nearly 55 million in WWII, and 2.7 million during the Korean conflict.

Ask those poor souls who won the wars.

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In the next war, if there is one—perhaps pitting the USA and its allies against North Korea and its allies—one can only imagine what the death tolls might be.  The current population of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is approximately 25 million.  The city is well within the range of North Korean bombardment.  The population of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, is close to 4 million, and it, too, lies within range of enemy attack.

Imagine the horror of a nuclear strike against either city, or a chemical or biologic-pathogen attack.  Imagine the carnage that would follow.  Strike would be followed by counter-strike, the targets would multiply, and any nation that dared join the fray would leave itself open to similar attacks.

If past examples are anything to go by, such hostilities might well lead to a world-wide conflagration, where even western-hemisphere nations would be affected.  It might not last long, but it would almost surely be the most deadly conflict of all time.  And as we know, the hangover from nuclear detonations or man-made epidemics would alter living conditions on the entire planet, perhaps threatening everyone still alive to witness it.

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One might imagine (if one had a macabre sense of humour) a cluster of cockroaches amidst the ruins, perhaps the only survivors.  After surveying the desecration, one might turn to the others with a quizzical expression.

“So, who won?”