Ernie Pyle On War

War is complex and many people feel as though they have a strong grip on what it truly means and how everyone should feel about it. But, those people are just looking at it from one perspective, civilian, administrative, or a soldier. These three distinct points of view can change much of the way the nature of war is perceived and interpreted. The most common view from the administrative position is that war is a means to an end. It can accomplish what words cannot and has a definite winner and loser. Civilians seem to only accept that war when they feel morally justified, which they can be easily convinced that it is. But the downside to war and the way that all soldiers know is that war can only be won by countries and the men who fight the

O'Brien explains how the war left him,“There was that coldness inside [him]. [He] wasn't [himself]. [He] felt hollow and dangerous” (197). The war changed his as a person, it took him and destroyed his innocence and left his a hollow and burdened man. Ernie Pyle in his essay “The Death of Captain Waskow” stated that “You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone” (1). The nature of war is to have bloody and brutal conflicts, that cannot be changed. Which is ultimately much more destructive for the people who cause a country to be destroyed than it is for the country who sent them as a whole. Soldiers need to be brutal for their side to win and they must sacrifice themselves to gain victory. There are moral and honorable acts of war but often those must be ignored for the country to win, yet another reason why it destroys those who fight on the front lines. They are desensitized to death and brutal acts of war, the killing actively kills the innocence they have as people. If these men are not outright wounded then they come home, different people. The massive cost in the lives of those who fight in the war is evident by this. They either die the hero or live long enough to see themselves become unrecognizable to their loved ones and