War

Don't recall ever playing Cowboys and Indians. We were huge Lone Ranger kids, we loved them both. Yeah, I know, stereotypes; but, I was seven. Mostly played war with my buds, in the vacant lots, parks, or around the apartments. Anywhere can be a battleground when you're playing. 

We were never against each other, always the same platoon. The enemy was only a hologram in our young imagination, otherwise invisible. But, I could actually see them as we played. They were always nazis, in uniform. 

After all, they did kill my parents' families, only my mom barely surviving, a prisoner in Auschwitz. So, ità was easy for me to imagine I was a soldier, like Sergeant Chip Saunders, Vic Morrow's great charactee from the TV show Combat, that I always watched with my father, himself a brave resistance fighter in Greece. 

It was easy to see these imagined enemies as we acted out our boy version of war dramas, easy for me to focus my anger and resentment over never knowing my own grandparents, uncles, aunts, all killed in the death camps; so I imagined taking vengeance, seeking justice for them. 

No doubt, none of this was in my buds play thoughts, their histories different, but we all shared a sense of being on the side of good, defending the US. But, I also remember that is was complicated, the knowledge of war. 

I had Japanese friends. I had another friend who lived in my building, he came with his family from Germany. Ernie and I usually walked to school together, swapping our bag lunches along the way, that was my first taste of knockwurst. I remember my mom talking to me one day about Nazis and Germans, the distinction, but I was already aware, knowing what the numbers tattooed on her forearm meant, what she had gone thru, what happened to our innocent relatives. 

Playing war or Army as we did, "killing" the enemy, it probably helped me feel less sad, more empowered, more in control. So much of this world, then and now, not in anyone's control, at least on the worst days. I'll pray my son never sees the horror of war.