Karma R Us, War is Hell; Read the Antidote. Part I of II. By Gene W. Edwards. Posted 10/27/2023.

“I did some bad things, and I did some good things, Magda — but always there was you.

— Hans.

That’s my take on Retreat: A Love Story, a novel by Dr. John Z. Guzlowski. It’s a sweet tale amid many horrible events, in Berlin, Russia, and Ukraine. It follows a German soldier fighting in Hitler’s ill-conceived war in the east. Magda is a bookkeeper/accountant for a high-end department store in Berlin Her Hans is the itinerant soldier, Hans who, on two weeks leave, met her on a Berlin street in 1944.

I WANT YOU TO BUY GUZLOWSKI’S BOOK AND TAKE IT TO HEART. Reread it about once a year. War is not a sport. It’s not a big-game lottery in which you can win a ticket to hunt men “packin’” in a certain zone or country. It’s as serious as hell!

In war, even the best of men lose any concept of morals and humanity. They shoot, torture, and rape prisoners; they take anything and everything they can; and there’s not nearly enough mercy to go around.

We’ve noticed lately how the Geneva Conventions and their international treaties of war are doing. If one side follows them, their opponent has an instant advantage by ignoring all distractions and are only driven to kill and vanquish by any and all means of cruelty and dominance. Wars of attrition seem endless for all. Tenacity is often the victor. And then there are wars of miscalculation: Hitler’s overreach. Putin’s…