There was an awful report on the BBC a few years back about child soldiers fighting in Syria's civil war. Unimaginable the horror these young boys are experiencing. Then again . . .

It occurred to me that my own grandfather was sent to the front in WWI at the tender age of 16. The story I heard is that he ran away from home, and, using the birth certificate of someone who had a similar name, but was a bit older, enlisted in the Army. I recall seeing a photo of him smiling before a massive artillery piece. Better to be the one firing one of those cannons and making minced meat of the enemy, I guess, than vice versa.

His son, my father, joined the Navy at the age of 17, just a few years after the end of WWII. I asked my mother what would possess someone to do that. “People were very patriotic in those days,” she replied. He would later re-enlist in the Marines and get sent off to Japan and Korea. (Obviously, I wouldn't be around today if he had been one of the more than thirty-three thousand Americans who died there.) He was in Japan during the Occupation for about 13 months, I believe, something he rather enjoyed. His time in Korea wasn’t as much fun, as I can imagine.

One of the themes of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 is that WWII was fought by boys despite the image portrayed in Hollywood movies. The oft-forgot subtitle of that novel was The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.

Seems, the more things change, the more they stay the same.