Papa, Why Do You Care?

It’s November 15, 1969, I woke up this morning and made some coffee. I let the dog out and she brought me the paper. While reading the paper I am becoming more and more disgusted with the war. I have already been to some small town meetings in our local area, but they seem to me to be just of talk. I need to see more action in our cause to end the war. I thought by electing Nixon that this would end, but it has been 10 months and nothing has changed. My faith in elections has died. I no longer believe that electing an individual will change anything. If it did it would be illegal.

I heard some rustling in the hall and I looked over and there was my son with his hair all messy and rubbing his eyes. I had him sit down at the kitchen table. I got him some orange juice and cereal, and then went back to reading the paper.  I started reading an article about some of the protest in the last week. They have seemed to be escalating. Today we are going to Washington to protest. It is suppose to be the largest anti-war protest in the United States. The paper seems to only be talking about the violence and radicalism of the protest. They don’t even focus on was we are crying out for. It seems that they are only worried about the cries and the fist, but not the words. They are focused on the problem, not the solution. There was a time where the media spoke out for the people, but now they are all bought by politicians to say what they are suppose to say then end of story.

I slammed the paper down on the table and startled my son.

He looked up at me and asked, “Papa, why do you care? Why do you care what they make other people do? They are not making you or me or mama do it.”

I looked at my son across the table. I saw some curious eyes and decided that there was no better time to tell him this story.

“Son let me tell you a story. It was 25 years ago in Germany. There was a man who had made his living working as a construction man. He owed his own company. He was honest and hard working. One day a solider came to his door and asked him to dig some trenches with his equipment. The solider wanted unusual size trench, it sounded like a large pool instead of a trench.  The solider to the construction worker that he was further the cause of Germany by helping them build these trenches.

Two weeks after he had dug these trenches, the construction worker was woken up in the middle of the night. There were three soldiers banging on his door. They told him to get dressed and bring his bull dozer. He will need to fill in those trenches now. He got dressed and started his bull dozer. He drove out to the site and when he got out there he got out to see why they needed them filled in so urgently.

In the trench there were men, woman, and children. Some were dead, but it appeared most were dying and those that were not dying were clinging to those that were. It appeared that the soldiers had gathered these defenseless people placed them in the trench and fired their machine guns that the people. The construction worker was sick to his stomach; he could not believe what his trenches were being used for.

A solider came out with a gun drawn and pointed it at the construction worker. He told the man to get in the bull dozer and fill in the hole. The construction worker cried out that there living people in there and he could not kill a person let a long women and children. The solider told him he had two choices. First he could get the bull dozer and serve his country or the soldier would shoot him and get someone else to do it. Either way those people were going to be buried alive tonight.”

I paused to look at my sons face. It was shocked. He had heard some awful things about the War, but not something so personal. He asked me to finish. He wanted to know what the man did, but instead of finishing I asked him what he would do. His answer blew me away.

“Papa, I like living. I like playing baseball and going for walks with you and mama. You know? I mean those people were going to die anyways, does it really matter who does it?”

There was a long pause then he looked up at me and said, “But I don’t think I could do it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I could not live with myself knowing that I had killed innocent people. I would rather die than live with that.”

Then I told him that that is why I care.

And that is why his grandpa cared.