Missing In Action

War destroys cities, villages and nations. But more than that war destroys real people. Men and women with families, children and loved ones. We always think of the collateral damage - the mother who mourns the loss of a child, the father who bears the brunt of an amputation, the child who just lost a few years of schooling, the refugees who have nothing but the nature to provide for their food and shelter. One group of people who we often do not remember are the soliders of war. The ones who actually are sent to fight - by unscrupulous dictators or great leaders. Men and women who live to remember the trauma of the battlefield. Men and women who are Missing In Action or are captured as Prisoners Of War.

In my life as a care giver of veterans of world war II through the recent invasion of Iraq, what I see are real men (rarely women) who have huge scars of battle in their mind and body. Beautiful people who lost their innocence in the fields of Europe and the middle East. Some went to save the world from dictators, some went to win a cold war played out in a 'wasteland'. What if we did not have war, what if these could be averted by nations united against hatred and bigotry. A dream that may never be fulfilled. But in the waning years of my youth, I hold tight to my right to dream and my right to see innocence in the scars of war.
 

MIA or POW - You are not forgotten!