Avoiding War

   My recent reading about Germany during the two world wars made me conscious of the fact that during a century of many years of war, neither my father nor I was ever involved in fighting, though both of us spent time in uniform. Sheer luck.

   My father was born in Germany in 1896, old enough to be a soldier in World War I and indeed was drafted into the German army. Instead of being involved in fighting, however, the only “action” he saw was a stint in the German occupation of Russia after the war had ended on this German Eastern front. I have a picture of my father and a group of German enlisted men playing chess in a tent in Russia.

   In 1939, I emigrated with my family to the United States, arriving in March, before the start of World War II with the German invasion of Poland. By the time of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, my father was 45 years  old, beyond drafting age.

   Born in 1927, I was then14 years old, not yet subject to the draft. And when that time came—in February 1945—I was deferred  for the few months I needed to graduate from high school. But that July, 1945, I joined the US Navy. (How I thus avoided the more usual stint in the army is another story.)

   The war was then still on. In Europe it had ended on May 8, 1945, after Hiroshima, the war in the Pacific concluded on August 15.

   With the war over, the terms of those of us who had been drafted changed (I forget the details) and while much propaganda was lavished on us to sign up to continue to do battle in the Korean War, it was possible to get out. Which I did.