I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

I had the first integrated Army band in World War II.

Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, "Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer?" You know the answer, of course.

And of course there is so much of World War II that is documented that we never have seen.

Registration is a World War II response, and we need a 1980 solution.