It’s 1953, just a few weeks after having completed intense advanced infantry training with the 511th Airborne at Ft. Campbell KY., and I find myself on a Navy vessel together with thousands of troops on the way to Korea to fight in a war. About two-thirds of the way there, we are awakened by loud speakers blasting away and saying the following: “Good news men, the South Korean government has just announced after several failed attempts, that a cease fire has been reached and the fighting is over.” We all look at each other and wonder out loud.

Over, it can’t be over. We were trained to fight and couldn't wait to get over there, and, it’s over. That is so wrong. What now?

We spent sixteen weeks running up and down mountains and valleys in Kentucky and Tennessee learning how to handle pistols, rifles, machine guns, scary hand grenades, various mortars and other implements of war. We actually learned how to kill with bayonets and our own hands. And now. That’s all for nothing? Bull, that’s what it is! What the hell do we do with all our newly learned skills? Do they really expect expect us to hang out in a third world country doing nothing until our tour is over and then just go back to being civilians? They disrupted our lives. We were drafted and some were actually at the beginning of a career. Others were getting ready to start a family or considering returning to school. Not all of us were just hanging around with nothing to do. Wow, who the hell are the crazy people that are actually running this show?

Of course no one answers or really gives a damn what we think. After all, we have no voice in the Army, and so our Army routine aboard the ship continues on as usual until we arrive days later at Pusan, the most southern port in South Korea. We are immediately loaded onto a train normally used for passengers, to travel north to the Demilitarized Zone at the 38th parallel. Here, North and South Korea have surrounded a thin strip of land with barbed wire and many landmines, and called it, ”no-man’s-land” or the DMZ. Today, it is still a place where one can hear occasional explosions set off by an animal who unfortunately cannot read or distinguish the meaning of a sign painted with a “skull and crossbones”. Before boarding the train, the Army gives us instructions. In the Army one always gets instructions; sometimes on-point, and other times not so much, but always instructions. What they really are though are orders. Yes, they give orders twenty-four-seven, and we we follow orders such as: “Men, be alert, because even in a time of truce, some bad guys are still swooping in at night and shooting up trains and killing American troops.” There are always “bad guys” in the world. Why else would young recruits like us ever have to fight a war?

Ok, that’s more like it. We’re into it now. Totally in the moment and ready for action. We envision that it’s just like we are all in that “B” rated, cowboy and Indian movie that we grew up watching. We see ourselves shooting lots of bad guys as the train moves northward. But again, us stupid young men are disappointed because the action didn’t happen, and we didn’t get into any kind of fight. In the morning, we arrive at the DMZ and are dropped on the doorstep of our new home away from home, the 40th Division, the California National Guard. At that point, little did I guess that I would live in Los Angeles someday, and actually have the opportunity to address the 40th Division troops tomorrow at their headquarters in Long Beach. We are the very first replacements for battle weary, combat veterans who just want to go home and forget.

For some unknown reason someone reads my records, and I end up in the 224th Regiment, Headquarters and Headquarters-Counter-fire platoon. My days as a lowest-of-low grunt and fox hole dweller ends, and I move up the food chain. This squad uses very primitive electronic equipment, and they get to live in bunkers, sleep on commo-wire bunks and hang out in high mountain outposts tracking enemy artillery fire. Or else they are patrolling the DMZ, looking for infiltrators who want to bring harm to all Americans.

That is when my education about war began. But, even then, it was very limited because you have to be in the thick of battle to truly know what combat is like. You have to do it to do it, and only then, do you truly know it. I was in a combat zone for many months, and in some danger every day, but I would never experience the day-to-day continuous and brutal destruction and personal damage that actual combat soldiers experience. I didn’t know how lucky I was.

I quickly found out that the men we were replacing were just guys like us. They were a mix of laborers, college dropouts, stock boys, teachers, farmers, plumbers, and salesmen. For the short time before most of these soldiers rotated back home, I got to observe them up close and personal. They-like-us were highly trained so that a war could be won. They didn’t talk much, and certainly didn’t make an effort to make friends. I found out later, that was on purpose because it was easier to not have a friend than to lose a friend. But I did see the effects that war had on them, in the way they acted and interacted with me. They went out of their way to teach me battle survival skills: how to handle my bayonet; how to clean and protect my weapon so it wouldn’t jam; how to throw a knife; how to be alert and aware of my surroundings; and how to guard my fellow soldiers in time of danger. These soldiers wanted all of us to have the skills to survive. If we asked that same question. “Hey buddy, what’s it like up there?” They would respond “You don’t want to know”, or just look away with a blank look and shrugg.

My first night on the DMZ was my coming of age and when I truly grew up. Remember, I was just twenty years of age. All my thoughts prior to that war were about having a few beers, driving my convertible, deciding what girl to chase, or which dance to attend next. I found my voice that night when something loud woke me up from a rather good sleep in that warm, but uncomfortable bunker berth. I was upset that someone was uncaring enough to make so much noise that it woke me from a good sleep. The sounds at first were eerie and strange. Then they appeared to sound more like someone crying, and then they culminated in some kind of soft but piercing screams. I got up to see where the sounds were coming from, and realized it was out front where several hundred of those old infantry guys, now mixed with my former mates, were bedded down in their individual fox holes. They were coming from more than one fox hole, and some sounded more like a nightmare, or did I hear actual men crying? But what else could it be? Yes, it was, and I soon began to realize that it was grown men who were reliving what they saw and felt days and maybe weeks before.

I wondered what the hell did to get myself into this mess. What if it started all over again? How would I react? Why should I or anyone ever be put in this position again? Do we need war, I asked the Adjuster within me? Why does any young person, who may at some time before going to war had been a Sunday school teacher and was faced with the following?

“The day I was in combat, I saw my first enemy soldier moving above me and to my right, and I raised my weapon, loaded a round into the chamber, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger just like I was taught, and he fell to the ground, dead. After that, I thought I would feel regret or shame, but no, I felt pleasure in what I had done. Then, my men applauded and shook my hand. I was proud that I was able to protect them.

And how about that fighter pilot who puked up his guts after returning from that strafing run where he got so close to a vehicle carrying a group of young men that he could actually see their bodies thrown high in the air as his fifty-caliber bullets hit them. Yet, that next day and many more to follow, he woke in the morning, started the engine of his plane and returned to reign more death on those below him. How many years after he returned to civilian life, do you suppose he was haunted by those memories?

The Adjuster replied: “There has always been evil in this world and all means of negotiations have to be explored to avoid war. But then, when all efforts have been totally exhausted, it is then, that war becomes the only solution. Consider this please: If evil did not exist, maybe we wouldn’t need religion?”