If the death of a youth seems needless, how much sense does a battlefield casualty make? How about a “friendly fire” battle casualty? Can we find any meaning in that?

Bari.

It’s a southern Italian port on the Adriatic Sea that the allies used for supplies during World War II. On the night of December 2, 1943, about fifty Liberty ships were moored in the harbor, waiting to be unloaded. One of them, the USS John Harvey, had a cargo of mustard gas, which was outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

That night, the German Luftwaffe conducted a twenty-minute air raid that became known as “Little Pearl Harbor”. More than two thousand troops and civilians were killed; many by the Germans, some by friendly fire from the defending shore guns, some from the friendly fire of the unleashed top-secret nerve gas chemicals.

The Allies weren’t supposed to have the chemicals for the gas, but the fear was that the Axis might use mustard gas; so those containers were sitting on the John Harvey, “just in case.” It was covered up for fear of “retaliation” by the Germans.

Doctors examining the afflicted servicemen noticed that odd things were happening. Why were the sailors’ white blood cells dying? This peaked their curiosity, which led them to discover that they had been exposed to the mustard gas. Which led to more research.

In 1981, a boy was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia ten days before his third birthday. Leukemia is cancer of the blood; an overabundance of white blood cells. He was treated, went into remission, grew as big as a linebacker, and today teaches art.

Part of his treatment – and for millions of others - was vincristine, a chemotherapeutic agent made from an alkaloid from the Madagascar periwinkle, a poison plant. The same type of plant used in the making of mustard gas.

The boy’s father – who was always afraid of giving blood – had his consciousness raised when his child became ill. The young children in his son’s oncology ward would undergo painful spinal taps in a separate room, and then return to their beds, hang onto their mother or father for relief, and fall asleep, exhausted emotionally.

The man’s three year old son would return to his bed and, as his tears dried, would immediately resume playing with his Matchbox cars. If his young son could demonstrate such pluck, why was his father afraid of a little needle in the arm?

The father began to donate blood on a regular basis - even after his son went into remission - and didn’t stop until the mid-1990’s, when a minor medical condition prevented him from doing so any more. Some of that blood supply was shipped to the troops in Desert Storm, on ripples that started in Bari.

That should have been the end of the story. Except that, for the father, that act of sacrifice by someone else’s children at Bari raised a lot of questions.

How many people have survived cancer due to the sacrifice of those sailors and merchant mariners? How many are even aware of it? What words of consolation can we give to the parents and spouses and children and lovers and descendants of those troops? Is the fact that the loss of their lives meant the saving of so many others consolation enough?

What could anyone offer, beyond a simple, “thank you”?

Then he remembered a Jewish saying concerning the randomness of life, which raised more questions. What kind of lives, what kind of contributions could those fallen heroes have made, had they lived? How many Einsteins; how many Martin Luther Kings; how many Marie Curies or Jonas Salks or Abraham Lincolns was humanity cheated of?

On Memorial Day, the day Americans remember their war dead, politicians will bleat out their speeches and lay wreaths on graves. Media pundits will lay their hands on their hearts, salute the flag, and shed a few crocodile tears. Some of them might even be sincere.

But when they try to sell us the next war, will they be troubled by the same questions? Will we trouble them with our questions? Will they have any clues as to what it means, what it really means, to send someone else’s children - our children - to war?

Here’s a clue to start with. The Jewish saying mentioned above:

“A loss to one is a loss to all.”