The Brave Few - April 13, 2006

Why do we turn our backs?

Today I change the scope of my blog, Warriors and Wars, to include those brave men and women who have help shape my country into what I love so much.

Many don’t remember Andersonville. Many never knew what it represents. During the American Civil War, the south opened a prison for Union troops. It was called Camp Sumter, now known as Andersonville.

In just fourteen months that the prison was open, 45,000 Union troops were held there. And 13,000 of them, died a deplorable death. I won’t go into the abuse and outrage of the time, there are sites that do this. . . Andersonville Prison

We can debate the reasons for the deaths, but we can not debate that it continues today. As all terrible events, some good has followed Andersonville.

Can any of us imagine what prison life in Andersonville was like? Can any of us imagine what the battlefields of the Civil War must have been like?

Clara Barton saw both. And we remember her for organizing the American Red Cross.

During the Civil War there were few medical procedures
and few doctors in service on either side, today we would call them butchers, but they saved so many. Many times they just started cutting on a screaming patient, while others held him down.

The most common antidote for a bullet shot was amputation, limb removal . . . That seemed to be the cure for all that ails. And blood flowed in streams through the makeshift hospitals. The discarded limbs were tossed into piles.

But what agony had the organizers of the Red Cross witness to make them start those early hospitals? Just imagine bodies laying wounded and dying, crying out where ever they fell. And no one was helping them, and no one collected the bodies. Stephen Crane captured it in “The Red Badge of Courage.” A must read for anyone who wants a glimpse into the horrors of the Civil War.

And those organizers came together internationally also. They helped to establish our most sacred rules for treating human beings in war. Those rules have become known to all as the Geneva Convention.

And today my country chooses to turn its head on the document that is largely American. Why?

Dan Hanosh
. . . Brave Men Never Die
They Live in the Hearts
and minds of others.

tags: Dan Hanosh
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