Upcoming from Journey Institute Press
A Different Kind of War
A gripping story about the moral quandaries of combat and the liberation of Chartres Cathedral from the Nazis in August of 1944. The two protagonists struggle with the reality of war – men are required to kill, unless they disobey orders. Hammond discovers his conscience and refuses to fire his gun. Bourne, a Quaker pacifist, follows orders and kills enemy combatants.
Instead of immediately throwing Hammond to a court martial with a potential death sentence, the commanding officer allows the soldiers in his company to debate his fate. The trial, a turning point for everyone, leads other men to the visceral understanding that war entails killing. To the commander’s satisfaction, the trial strengthens those mens’ resolve to fight the efficient German killing machine. Hammond remains a pacifist.
Readers interested in World War II and in vivid descriptions of combat won’t be able to put this book down. Pacifists and anti-war activists will be attracted to the tension between the two protagonists. The idea of a “just war” will motivate additional readers.
The Journey Institute press release is below.
Endorsements
Helen Thorpe, prize-winning journalist and author of Soldier Girls.
“Ed Wood writes with stark compassion about the unforgiving dilemmas facing anybody asked to wear the uniform and carry a gun. He himself had grown up the child of citizen soldiers, going back to wars between settlers and Native Americans, and he served overseas in combat during WWII, but he turned his back on that heritage and on gun ownership in pursuit of inner peace. In this book, he relives the quandaries he faced personally in France through his characters, so as to illustrate for the rest of us what it really means to obey or disobey a commander’s orders to fire a bullet at another human being.”
Tom Bowie, Professor Emeritus and Dean, Regis University. A national expert on the literature of war, much of his research focuses on the human dimension of conflict, on personal narratives that bear witness to the horrors of modern war, and on the lifelong journey toward reconciliation that inevitably follows such conflicts.
“In his probing and poignant novella, A Different Kind of War, Ed Wood invites us to consider the dark underside of modern conflict, the moral complexities and compromises associated with violence and killing. Rooted deeply in Ed’s own experience as a replacement soldier during the liberation of France in the fall of 1944, his subsequent wounding and lifelong quest for healing, and most especially in his status as an exile from the Army Specialized Training Program at UCLA, Wood examines what it means to face not only the fear of death or dismemberment, but also the act of killing others—what it means to ‘be killed or be killing’ as a Jesuit priest puts it in the narrative.
“From the company commander at the center of the novella, to a priest with a gun and a Protestant minister with compelling questions about just war theory, to ruthless killers from the Nazi SS divisions and their Allied counterparts, to members of the French Resistance and their wives and children, Wood probes the impossibly complex moral quandaries that modern conflict thrusts upon all who are caught in its web of violence and killing. His characters marshal their best moral, religious and philosophical arguments to buttress their actions, even as they betray, compromise or refine their beliefs. What does it mean to kill? To kill in the face of demonstrable evil? To exercise freedom of conscience or to object conscientiously to killing in war?
“Wood sums up his reflections in his Author’s Note that closes the text: ‘Over many decades…I slowly came to understand that the central issue of World War II was the world’s acceptance of both the duty to kill and the destruction of innocence, how that acceptance has become part of who we are today as a nation and as a world.’ What might it mean, what must it mean, to recognize that ‘To protect innocence one must kill evil’ at the very same time we come to see that ‘in killing evil, we become evil ourselves?’
“These are the questions at the center of A Different Kind of War, questions that Wood urges us to engage in his provocative and compelling narrative. Perhaps more urgently than ever, our world today begs us to reckon with such questions. Ed’s story, rooted in an immortal past, calls out to us with renewed force today…if only we have the sense to hear.”
Larry Newton, a retired psychologist, is on the Board of the Quaker journal, Western Friend. He is a member of Flagstaff Monthly Meeting and is the Administrative Clerk for Intermountain Yearly Meeting.
“This book has legs, it has wings, and yes, it has blood and gore – but most importantly, it has heart, Light, and soul. I believe it was written not to be entertainment, but to help readers engage with the questions of peace, labels, morals and virtue – and why those matters.
“The history of Memorial Day [the day on which I write this endorsement] goes back to post-Civil War. It was then a day to remember those who died in battle to uphold the virtues, purpose and honor of our nation – that no one should be enslaved, or abused by another; that our nation’s laws protect the rights of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – not just some people – all the people. A Different Kind of War is a most engaging experience of contemplating what those words mean in an entirely different time and place. It calls the reader to travel with real people facing real, life and death decisions, and importantly, facing real questions of what it means to be moral and virtuous.
“It is an interesting book for Quakers to read. It draws out the distinction in our peace testimony of what is form, and what truly is the substance. Quakers may reject the book because it is too violent, and some may think it celebrates war. Christians may reject the book because they may fail to recognize the important, yet at times subtle distinctions, of what peace means. Does it mean peace on any terms?
“It is an interesting book for those drawn to World War II literature. The writing, characters and action will hold their own with the best of those books. The graphic depictions simply do belong because they are part of the truth of the experience that is being told.
“In my coming of age in the 1960s, giving up a graduate school draft deferment to apply for conscientious objector status and signifying thereby my willingness to take whatever non-combatant service my draft board assigned me during the Viet Nam War, I felt I had to face a matter of moral identity. It was the most defining decision I had made in my life up to that time – and a key was, the decision was just not about me. This is what we learn as we read A Different Kind of War.”
Author Ed Wood 