Remembering War: Laura Fermi and Finding the Enemy

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans' Day in the US, the end of the Great War.  Not a bad day to read Laura Fermi's Atoms in the Family--or for that matter my  Finding the Enemy.

It's been 100 years since a start of that conflict which set the stage for so much of the history o the 20th century.  The wearing of red poppies to honour--or glorify--those who fought is something I stay away from.  War is Hell, and while those who died should be remembered, nothing is gained from jingoism or patriotic chest beating.

But having said that, it's worth mentioning a series of photos in The New York Times today as well as the two books named above.  The pix are recently declassified ones of young men preparing the two A bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The Second World War ended then, and the debate will go on for decades more about whether that was necessary.  What is clear is that things changed dramatically afterwards.

What is also clear is that the people involved were all very young.   The birth rate at the secret research and bomb test site in New Mexico was very high, and life a little complicated for the young families who were moved there so the men (and they were almost all men) could build the bomb.  Laura Fermi, the wife of Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi and a mathematician herself, was one of them, and, clearly not completely challenged by being a housewife, wrote a book about their experience.  If only for a glimpse at how much intelligent women were up against 70 years ago, the Atoms in the Family is worth reading.  But it also is a look at war on the home front, amusing, touching and ultimately serious.

My own book of short stories is the fruit of a lot of reflection about war.  The title comes from the cartoon strip Pogo, who says "We have met the enemy and he is us."  What are our responsiblities when faced with situations of conflict?  How do we separate a "just war" from an unjust one?  The main characters are a nuclear physicist who has to ask himself these questions after participating in the construction of the A bomb, and his family. The time frame ranges from the first A bomb test to the First War in the Persian Gulf in 1991.  The stories are intimate, personal and, I hope, thought-provoking.  The book is still around in many libraries and can be picked up from several on-line sellers.

And the photo?  Well, it's not the usual red poppy shot.  I took it in Portugal last summer, not far from the ruins of Conímbriga, a Roman town abandoned to attacks of the Visigoths about 300 AD.  War seems to be about as ever present as death and taxes.