BRAVE MEN

...I know, finally, that I did not assert that I was doing anything more than guessing when I guessed that this war would win nothing and lose much...

...The dead, they tell me, can not be brought back to life, and I know I killed them all because I did not stand between all of them and the bullets that were fired by and at them...

...If, not having been blindly butchered, I do not deserve the Purple Heart...

...Brave Men By MILTON MAYER NOW that it's all over but the shouting for land, peace and bread, and everybody who fought the war, or egged on other people to fight it, has written a book about his experiences, I think I should report on my own...

...I was sure I wouldn't get into C.P.S...

...Most of us, excepting your servant Mayer, were, to borrow Ernie Pyle's expression, Brave Men...

...With a fellow like you, who has access to print, it is my recommendation that we find you a physical 4-F for some such debility as uncut toenails or a filling in one tooth...

...and it was they who had everything to lose in this war, while I, in-my soft spot, had nothing...

...units, where we fought forest fires by parachute and submitted ourselves to experimental injections of pneumonia and other interesting afflictions...

...But I know, too, that I tried a little to save them from dying...

...A handful, including your servant Mayer, slipped through altogether and saved, not only their ideals, but their lives and their money...

...makes two or three more CO's and no nation knows how to handle the problem...

...And, hazardous or no, it pre-dated Pearl Harbor by many years and will post-date Potsdam by many years more...

...They were drafted...

...We are going to keep down the number of C.O.'s in every way we can, because every CO...

...My favorite relative was killed on Leyte, and one of my favorite friends was killed when he rolled over in a jeep deep in the heart' of Texas...

...Money, fame, and power all awaited me...

...So, while there were Brave Men who fought against this war, your servant Mayer can not claim he was one of them...

...and that, though I failed, I can still trjj'to save the next war's dead from dying...

...After all, those who killed bravely had the whole community on their side...

...I am one of the few thousand maladjusted, destructive, and unre-generate draft-dodgers who fought against the war, and, the way things are stacking up, I am going to be in service fighting against the next one before 200,000 bodies in Hiroshima are cold...

...Win, lose, or draw, I was snug...

...I know, too, that I did not electrify cocktail parties, as did an acquaintance of mine who has just bought a Summer home on his profits, by saying, "Just let me bash in a few Nazi heads before I die...

...And when I got out I am sure that I could have written a series of articles for the Reader's Digest on My Prison Days, inasmuch as Mr...

...And so, though I slipped through this particular siege of hell on earth with my ideals, my money, and my life intact, I do not feel as guilty as I might...

...I except your servant Mayer from this category of Brave Men, not because I am modest, but because I found myself in a position where, no matter what happened to me, I would come out ahead...

...FINALLY, since I had set up such a public squawk against the war, my employers all found they had a bear by the tail, and they didn't any of them dare let go of me...

...The other half, more or less, went to the penitentiaries, because we claimed political rather than religious objection, and there, in addition to losing our citizenship and our good name, we took quite a beating from the honest convicts...

...and that the^e will be no more war when enough men know that they do not have to kill just because they are told to...

...Ralph McA...

...I think I served my country, in my flat-footed way, and if I did not serve it too well, I think I served it at least as wisely as those who did the shooting...

...Ingersoll, the editor of PM...

...Hershey) said to me, "Mayer, we are going to be smarter this time than last when it comes to fellows like you...

...I wasn't, of course, a draft-dodger, although that is the designation given by at least one university professor to those of us who informed our draft boards that they would die for humanity but not kill for it...

...ISAY they are Brave Men, the men who, excepting your man Mayer, fought against the war...

...because, although I believe in God, my objection to this war was political and He was only my second line of defense...

...They did not choose to be brave or cowardly...

...A few of us were classified as psycho-neurotics, and suffered the penalties that go along with that distinction...

...DeWitt Wallace, the owner of that journal, simply reeks with money and has a soft spot in his head for me...

...I say only that those who stood up against all the engines of propaganda and slander and contempt and fought against the war were Brave Men, too...

...And so, from the start, I suspected that I would never end up in the clink...

...And if I'd been sent to the clink, I'd have done all right, too...

...Half of us went to CO...

...But the Brave Men I sing of chose to be brave at every point...

...and that the exajuple of the Brave Men I sing of, no less than the Brave Men who died, may bring a few more, or a few thousand more, or a few million more, to the consciousness of their absolute power against war...

...and scream, with clenched fists, "We must fight," and then ask for deferment on the ground of my indispensability to a job that was less heavy than killing...

...I know, too, that I did not stand before audiences, as did Mr...

...Months before we went to war, Gen...

...far from it...

...I have always got along inordinately well with felons, and I have acquaintances, I think I may say friends, in every Federal penitentiary in the country...

...This is not to say that I didn't suffer...

...My war service, if less hazardous than most, was more hazardous than that of any rear-echelon here who rushed to the Pentagon Building on Pearl Harbor Sunday and directed the slaughter, in full regalia, from the bar of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington...

...And I ask my countrymen to remember that the men who fought against the war in some strange sense embodied the right of individual conscience against the absolute authority of the state...

...1 do not say that those who fought and killed and died were not Brave Men...

...And millions upon millions of my brothers, and my sisters, and my little children were killed and starved and maimed all over the world...

...at no point did any of them say, with a shrug of his shoulders, "I don't want to, but I have to...

...In some strange sense, they were in the position of the great English poet who, when he was asked what he was doing for the war effort, replied, "I am what England is fighting for...

...I do not expect to be cheered, neither do I expect to be kicked in the pants...

...And sure enough, though I told my draft board, in a stenographically recorded hearing, that education was not essential to the war and that I was not essential to education, I received a 2-A classification the day after my case got into the papers and my appeal from 1-A, directed to the hearing officer assigned to professed C.O.'s, was returned as invalid...

...On that occasion, the boss of the educational institution which I grace said to me, "You-------, you are ruining the institution and I would fire you in a minute, but if I did you would claim I was anti-Semitic, and that would be worse...

...and if, as I certainly don't, I do not deserve the Medal of Honor,—I think I may still present my modest application for the Good Conduct Ribbon...

...that I did not enjoy the fall of any person designated as Enemy or the triumph of any person designated as Friend ; and that 1 am not gleeful or glorious just because the things I guessed would happen then have happened...

...they were forced to be one or the other, and the rewards of their bravery, including life itself, were rich...

...And, as the years rolled by, and Hitler, defeated and dead, crept closer, I would get to be more and more of a hero...

...and, in nearly every instance, their bravery was not an original matter of choice...

...I had made this discovery a few years earlier, when I wrote an article about the~Jews (including me), and the more vocal Jews in the country condemned me, along with Spinoza and Pilate, as anti-Semitip...

...Hershey (then Lt...

...And so I slipped through altogether and saved my ideals, my life, and my money...