"Good morning Starshine, there's love in your skies reflecting the sunlight in my lover's eyes..."
Despite the revolutionary sixties being over, battles were still being fought across the nation for changes that the youth wanted to see. Women were still seen as inferior, racial relations were still poor - improving, but poor - homosexuals were still not allowed to love those who crawled into their hearts and a war was still raging in Vietnam. Shortly before Marley was born, on the fourth of May, there was an antiwar protest at Kent State University in the state of Ohio that turned violent, and four kids were killed. Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer, all either nineteen or twenty years old. When I was nineteen and twenty, I was a midwife in the East End, a newlywed wife to a rockstar, a daughter to a Holocaust survivor and a docker, and a soon-to-be mother. I was that age in 1957 and 1958, a time when the revolution for change was just starting to boil, and here were these kids going off protesting an unnecessary violence, and facing yet another kind of unnecessary violence.
Given that I was nine months pregnant, I could not give a speech about it, and having chosen to 'retire' from protesting, I chose to stick to my word. I did, however, write an open letter to those kids, and still have a copy of it lying around. It was published in Time Magazine, in the newspapers, and several other places where it was read by millions across the country.
To the children of war,
As a child of war, I know how challenging it is to live through one, never knowing if myself or my loved ones would make it to see the next day. You experience a different version of war - the civilian one, as opposed to that of a prisoner of war. War may be abroad, but it has been brought home, on American soil, and the bloodshed continues. You are victims of the war to end war, and I wish I could say that you will be the last but I know that you will not be. Your innocent lives were stolen from you, but your fierce spirits will live on as we continue the fight to bring our boys home.
War is a heated argument by two political leaders, whether it is over money, religious beliefs, political beliefs or another reason. Like a game of chess, political leaders are the players, and their citizens the pieces. Citizens, like game pieces, are sacrificed for victory - a victory for what, one might ask. Proving that the victor's religion is superior? Proving that their politics are superior, or that they're richer? Proving that they can afford to buy the bigger guns and destroy the other player? To the citizens being sacrificed, war is not a game. To them, war is an eternal sleep, eternal frost, eternal pain and misery, longing for those who they love most and counting the days until the end. They say those who are killed are the lucky ones, because the survivors have to see it through.
Perhaps that is true, to a degree. Once, it was said to me that those who had died in the Holocaust were lucky because they didn't have to suffer through any further torment or starvation. According to that logic, I am one of the 'unlucky' ones that had to live to see it through. I remember the pain of being starved, the fear of being shot, the cold of the chilling Polish winters, the utter terror whenever I heard German words approaching. I told them that I was fortunate to live, so that I can pass on my experiences so that the future generations may learn from the mistakes of generations past. And so I say to those who are still trudging on, keep going. Keep fighting for the boys in Vietnam, keep fighting to bring them home. Your fight brings them strength, much how the American and English soldiers fighting to free me and my people brought me strength to live another day in the camps.
Know that no matter how many times they push us backwards, we must always push forward. Eventually, someone will have to give up, and it won't be us.
Your friend,
Catherine Cromwell
It was well received by the youth of America, but the older generations, as well as my brother-in-law, were groaning and feigning headaches at my antiwar words. They said a war was necessary to fight communism or else 'it'll take over the world', but I have lived over eighty years, and I have never seen communism even attempt to cross the oceans.
YOU ARE READING
The Free Spirit
General Fiction*Changed title because I am writing a similar story with the same title under a different account under @caitwarren 'Spiritul Liber' is the Romanian translation for 'The Free Spirit', which is the title of these memoirs that I, Catherine Cromwell, h...
