Once There were Brave Men Called Conscientious Objectors

Some media people are becoming the voice of the anti-war protesters, and lately they have been dredging up all kinds of history ... or history as they see it ... in an attempt to prove what the activists are doing in the streets of America right now has always been a very American thing. One story quotes a college professor who says the United States has had a peace movement since Colonial times, and I expect that is right. Certainly we have had anti-violence groups since the Quakers arrived on our shores. One group during the American Revolution was very much against war; they were called Tories, and they were loyal to the King. But most of today's reporters seem to think all American history started with the Vietnam War, and in their history book the anti-war riots of the that era were a high point in American history.

It seems to me if they would look a notch further back in our 20th century history ... look back to World War II and about two decades further back to World War I, they could find a point at which we had protestors who were very well-respected in our society. They were called "Conscientious Objectors" and they either did not believe in war, or they felt they could not kill another human being and thus could not go into combat.

But though many conscientious objectors did not want to serve in the military, neither did they want to turn the world over to evil men like Hitler or Mussolini or Tojo. They knew that was wrong, and that if we didn't do something, a lot of innocent people would die. So they volunteered to be combat corpsmen ... the people who would go into the fiercest fighting to save our wounded servicemen, right out there on the battlefield. Look at the record of the Navy Corpsmen assigned to the Marines on Iwo Jima in World War 11 ... at the number of conscientious objectors who died, and the number who were decorated for valor and bravery. They won respect from all of us, not on the streets of America, but on the battlefields where other brave men died for our freedom.

This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.