Stance on War

Marine Cpl. Kenneth Turner, a 22-year-old Michigan native, has applied for an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps as a conscientious objector. He contends that he has recently undergone a spiritual “reawakening” that makes it impossible for him to perform any military duty because to do so would be to support the efforts of a military machine.

Perhaps Turner has never seen or heard of Lew Ayres. Now in his 80s, Ayres can still be seen occasionally on television or in reruns of his old movies. As one of Hollywood’s romantic leading men prior to World War II, Ayres is probably best remembered as the original Dr. Kildare in a series of theatrical films. It was, however, his starring role in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the anti-war film that won the Academy Award for 1929-’30, that shaped his own thoughts regarding war.

At the outbreak of World War II, Ayres declared himself to be a conscientious objector. He objected on the grounds that war was against his religious beliefs and a sense of morals. On re-examination, however, the actor decided that he could participate in the war so long as he was not called upon to kill anyone.

Early in the war, Ayres volunteered for military duty as a medical corpsman. In the years that followed he found himself in the midst of some of the most horrendous fighting imaginable. Never was he armed. And never did he kill anyone. He quietly went about his job, never thinking of his own safety but saving the lives of who knows how many fallen comrades. Lew Ayres may not have had the medals of another actor, Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier, but there was none more heroic than he.

Just as Ayres found that there are duties in the waging of war that involve the saving of lives as opposed to killing, so might objectors such as Marine Cpl. Turner make the same discovery. Perhaps a bit more introspection might reveal to them the same light that Lew Ayres saw nearly 50 years ago.

ART MAGEE, Escondido