Defending One’s Country Is Moral, Too

In his letter (Physics Today, July 2001, page 12 ) concerning physicists who work on weapons systems, Greg Root writes that “they should do so without cloaking it in some fabricated moral justification.” In the next letter on the same subject, Eric McFarland writes that the “scientific community [should] … encourage young scientists and engineers to shun military work.”

In 1943, I visited my draft board in Milwaukee to give up my occupational deferment and ask to be inducted into the service. My vision of morality played a role in that decision. My service later in the 94th Infantry Division ended in machine-gun fire in March 1945, while I was leading a night patrol on the banks of the Rhine. I spent the next year in the hospital and retain some permanent disability. My assistant squad leader, who took over from me when I was wounded, was killed the next day. Altogether, we had 10 dead in our platoon from an average complement of about 30. Those men, ever young, still live in my memory.

I believe the men of my platoon, acting according to their own version of morality, contributed to the freedom that Root and McFarland have used to follow the paths they have chosen. I hope that some physicists will find a moral dimension today, as the men in my platoon did long ago, in contributing to the defense of their country.