Prisoner of war story ( May 14 )

 If I had been among the audience at the Naval War College when

    he spoke there, I too would have listened with rapt attention to

    Porter Halyburton . He  " suffered unspeakable dignities at the

    hands of his North Vietnamese captors ... tortured, placed in

    solitary confinement and fed food unfit for farm animals ."

      ( Providence Journal , May 14 , " From Suffering , Life Emerged " )

       Years after his ordeal as a prisoner of war, he seemed to experience

    a sort of epiphany reading existentialist psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's

    book " Man's Search for Meaning ". Frankl learned in Nazi concentration

    camps how to find meaning in the most extreme situations. More than

    anything that would help you to survive.

         His book -which I myself read while Halyburton was in North

    Vietnam - is deeper than the rather shallow " When bad things happen

    to good people ".

           But just a foot note to balance the enemy atrocity story :

     Last night I came across  another prisoner of war story in " The

    Wartime Journals of Charles Lindberg ".

           On Wednesday , June 21, 1944 he writes about the sad fate of

    a helpless Japanese prisoner of war.  A sergeant complained that he

    had  no real experience fighting and " would like the chance to kill

    at least one Jap before he went home ".

         So the Jap prisoner was brought to him . " Here was his

    opportunity".  But he was too decent a fellow to kill the

    man, a helpless prisoner.

      But another soldier was made of " the right stuff ". He

    offered the Jap a cigarette and a light. He had a puff or

    two, the prisoner and then quickly and treacherously  his throat

    was " slit from ear to ear ".

       Writes Lindberg : " The entire procedure was thoroughly approved

    by the general giving the account."

        In general WAR IS HELL !