Sept. 11, the day that never ends
The teacher stands before a class of young men. He is flanked by open windows. A military parade passes outside the school, and martial music fills the classroom. The teacher, Mr. Kantorek, is exhorting his students to enlist. "I believe it will be a quick war," he says, "and there will be few losses." It is 1914, the war lasted four years, and the losses were staggering. This is how the movie "All Quiet on the Western Front" begins. So did Sept. 11, 2001.
We are just a few days short of the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that caused an enormous loss of life and a horror that is still emotionally unmanageable. I was in Lower Manhattan that day, and for a long time afterward the sad, damp wail of bagpipes — the inevitable "Danny Boy" and "Amazing Grace" — suffused the island, funeral after funeral after funeral. The occasional passing of a firetruck, often to spontaneous applause, was an emotional experience. This is how I and so many others got to be like those German students. We were off to war.
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