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Abigail B. Calkin

A Blog of Flashbacks

See Scenes of War

December 2024

I put it mildly when I say I could not help but see scenes of warfare as my friend, Nancy, and I drove through beautiful Germany and Austria. As our Italian hosts, who now live in Switzerland, drove us to see the Christmas lights in Colmar, Alsace, I saw images of World War I and II. Holes from bombs landing. Panzer tracks. Destroyed forests. The same was true when I visited Normandy and Brittany in 2017. Why do I see these war images, now overgrown back to the normal beauty of fields and ocean?

Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. Taken November 2017

Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. Taken November 2017

Now-pristine fields in southern Germany.

Now-pristine fields in southern Germany.

Yet one field had not returned to its previous self, a field in Belarus. In 2013, I traveled to Russia and Belarus to give workshops on my work in standard celeration charting, also called precision teaching, and in behavior analysis as well. Everyone was wonderfully gracious and interested in my and my colleagues presentations. On a side trip to a little town outside of Mogilev, we saw a field with many of these ditches left over from those the partisans dug to defend against the Nazi invasion.

One ditch in a huge field of many partisan-dug  ditches near Mogilev, Belarus. Each ditch is a bit filled in since those originally  hand-dug during the early 1940s. Locals tried to defend their city against the  Nazi invasion.

One ditch in a huge field of many partisan-dug ditches near Mogilev, Belarus. Each ditch is a bit filled in since those originally hand-dug during the early 1940s. Locals tried to defend their city against the Nazi invasion.

As most families did, my family listened to the World War II news. At ages two through four. I cuddled in my father’s lap next to the radio. The radio had long-, medium-, and short- wave signals. We listened to Radio Moscow, London, and America Free Europe. We listened to New York and local Boston stations. We could listen to the local police and fire reports too. But more important, we listened to Lowell Thomas, and the voices of Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt. At age four, I was afraid of the German Nazi Soldiers who, according to my thoughts and fears, lived under my bed.

As I grew older, I learned one of my father’s cousins had been killed in World War I. As a teenager, I lived with another of my father’s cousins and her family in Canada. Cousin Ruth’s husband, a medic during World War I had lost an arm in France. He had planned to be a doctor, but his war wound changed his life. My cousin, Anne, had lost her husband, shot and killed in World War II.  Cousin Elinor’s husband came to our house in his Navy whites when in port. I answered the door one of those days. These were some of the realities I saw and heard about when young. More were to come.

At five I had my tonsils out and hemorrhaged afterwards. When the nurse went to find clean sheets, the closet was empty. The hospital had no clean sheets because three boatloads of our wounded from Europe had just arrived in Boston. This was 1947, two years after the war in Europe had ended. Three boatloads. That’s a lot of wounded. Even at age five, I knew they needed clean sheets more than I.

In my young life these were small stories with a contrasting reality. My reality of living safely in the Boston area contrasted with the reality of living in Europe or China or Japan. One of my aunts lived in China with her husband, the US consul general, and their young son. She sent my mother a postcard of a bawling toddler sitting on the railroad tracks of a bombed-out station. He was perhaps a year younger than I. I wanted him to come live with us. I needed a younger brother, and he needed a safe home. My father had a cousin and his family who moved from a town near London to Canada for the duration of the war.

But I was not in a war zone. I knew I was not a frightened child who feared for her own life and the life of her family. To this day, I do not understand why I had such empathy for these children and their families who were living in such danger and dying. But I did. I ached for them.

Flash forward. Where and when are we as so many countries are in the agony of war? Do I have the disadvantage, or the advantage, of remembering how awful war is? I wasn’t even there. I live in the United States. What are our borders? Peaceful Canada to the north, peaceful Mexico to the south. To the east and west, trillions of fish. We’re in a peaceful spot like nowhere else in the world. Yes, the power of weapons could change all that, but only at risk to the planet.

I read of Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Moldova, Romania, and of Russia. I worry. I read of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Sudan. I worry more. Are the countries of our planet taking those steps to create a World War III? I didn’t want to write that sentence. I didn’t want to think that thought. Yet I do. 

I think of Rodney King’s 1992 statement, "People, I just want to say, can't we all get along? Can't we all get along?"

My father was a Quaker. I am also. I went to Friends Seminary in New York’s Manhattan. Its  mission statement includes:

…adhering to the values of the Religious Society of Friends…. [S]tudents exercise their curiosity and imagination as they develop as scholars, artists and athletes. In a community that cultivates the practices of keen observation, unhurried reflection, critical thinking, and coherent expression, we listen for the single voice as we seek unity. The disciplines of silence, study, and service provide the matrix for growth:  silence opens us to change; study helps us to know the world; service challenges us to put our values into practice. At Friends Seminary, education is rooted in the Quaker belief in the Inner Light – that of God in every person. Guided by the testimonies of integrity, peace, equality, and simplicity, we prepare students to engage in the world that is and to help bring about a world that ought to be.

I like silence. I have studied, read, learned, and spent much time in athletics all my life. I volunteered on a ward for terminally ill children from 9th through 12th grades while at Friends. I feel the Inner Light in my life. I believe in peace. I have signs on the windowsill as I enter my office. The science one is there because I work in and research the natural science of human behavior.

I used to think we could have peace, but that war is a reality. I stopped thinking that about three years ago. I now see no reason for war. It seems based on greed and the selfish attitude ‘I want what you have and I’m willing to kill for that.’ Yes, life is not fair, but can’t we talk about it? Why do we have to kill about it? Every single war on this planet has ended, no matter how long it took. Am I being too simplistic to say why can we just not have them?

The signs on my windowsill by the door into my office.

The signs on my windowsill by the door into my office.

I remember the news media reporting, when trying to end the war in Vietnam that there was an argument between the two sides about the shape of the table. How absurd and childish can nations be? The peace talks started in 1968 and were eventually signed in January 1973. How many people died in those five years? To get personal, how many people did my husband, a teenager then, see die when he was a surgical tech in MASH units and evac hospitals in his two years in Vietnam?

Is it necessary to kill millions of people and to give the surviving millions—from the time of Homer’s Iliad and Odessey to the present—post-traumatic stress disorder? I think not.

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