There's that song again - Buffy Saint Marie singing “Universal Soldier.” I always stop what I'm doing and try to sing along with Buffy. I say “try” because the words are so moving and they get harder to say as I feel the sobs gathering inside me. When she gets to that line, “He doesn't want to kill, but he knows he always will, he's been a soldier for a thousand years,” I can't stop the tears and deep sobbing. Why should I? Should I just sit there with a smile and comment on how good the words are and how beautifully Buffy sings?

I'm a mother with six sons. During the '60s, with some of the boys in their teens, I became a mother who was learning what war really means. Then when draft age was upon us, I became a fierce mother out to save her sons from coming home in body bags.

Where do I go for help? The church was no help. On the contrary, the military lured them in too, and they blessed the bombs and planes and, oh yes, the soldiers too. Blessed them to do what? Prayed over them for what? To be “good soldiers?” What does that mean?

Everybody around me was talking about patriotism and serving their country. Yes, even then, back in 1966, and nobody knew anything about Vietnam or cared about the people there. My husband, a World War II veteran, also gave me the same patriotism argument. But after educating himself to the realities of the political agenda and the horrors of what our men were going through, he joined the efforts to end the war.

So the day arrived for my first son to fill out his papers. It came though the mail in booklet form, about 20 pages. Every cell of my body was on red alert and I can remember how clear I felt about my son, his life, his goodness.

I asked him, “Michael, do you want to go to Vietnam and kill people?” “No,” he answered, “What for? I don't even know them. Besides, why do countries fight anyway? There's all this technology for governments to talk to each other and solve problems without killing.”

“Hm, that's very intelligent,” I said. “If you don't believe in killing, sign here.” There on page 18, in the space of an inch and a half and easy to overlook, was the place of sanity. Michael really wanted to join the Coast Guard, which he did, and later saved people from drowning.

Recently someone said, “War is a crap shoot. First you go to boot camp and get the crap beat out of you, then you go off to fight an enemy and they shoot at you.” Not a pretty statement, but an elegant one.

There I was sobbing with Buffy, then I got angry and got writing. Mothers, wake up! Your child may look good in that uniform, but I see only a torn, dirty, blood-soaked uniform on a wounded or dead son or daughter. Is that worth raising your child for?

Well, I thought I'd fought the fight and could relax about drafts and government deceptions. But now I have six grandsons and, goodness me, a great-grandson, and another on the way. It looks like I have to pick up my pen and fight for their freedom. We all want and need freedom, but it isn't free. The price is always to be aware of what our government is doing in our name.

There's a song that doesn't make me cry. “What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came?” There are plenty of mothers everywhere who won't cry about that.

Lonsky writes from Genoa