As a child I would play/pretend/role play with my friends. We would build igloos at the North Pole while talking about another Ice Age coming. In 3rd Grade we hadn't yet heard about 'global warming'. There wasn't alot of free time/play time. There was school, homework, Brownies and Girl Scouts, piano lessons, swimming lessons, ice skating lessons, horseback riding lessons, voice lessons. There were even lessons on bike riding. Lessons, lessons, everywhere.
Dolls? A few. But they usually sat on my shelf. A porcelain-face ballerina with a gold lame maillot and a gold tuille tutu. Barbie was safely away in her case and I didn't like changing her outfits. My beloved stuffed rabbit, a Stieff, snuggled with me at at night. Ontop of my upright piano, next to the tick-tick-ticking of the metronome was a statue of my beloved horse listening to me practice my scales and watching my fingering.
In my neighborhood in Chicago, Albany Park, very few boys went into the military. It was primarily a Jewish neighborhood, with a large Swedish contingent, and a smattering of other minorities. There were lots of cultural resources due to 2 institutions of higher learning in the area, Northeastern Teacher's College and North Park College.
Kids in my cohort were too young to have gone to Viet Nam. I was born at the tail end of the boomers. I should have been the last of boomers to use Social Security and Medicare, but instead I was one of the first. I had barely worked a decade before I was laid-low by lupus-scleroderma and then the sequelae of untoward side-effects of chemotherapy and the disease process.
I never personally knew anyone who went to Viet Nam. I worked with people who had served and I worked in a psychiatric intensive care that treated Viet Nam era Vets who suffered from PTSD.
In general, I never studied war. For that matter, I never studied peace either.
Here are some of my favorite anti-war links. In no particular order.
The Peace Dollar per Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
John Lennon & Yoko Ono in bed for peace:
http://youtube.com/...
The Peace Museum in Chicago:
http://www.peacemuseum.org/
Lili Marleen, WWII love song and antiwar ballad:
http://youtube.com/...
Lyrics for Lili Marleen, if you don't believe me or are curious. My mother heard this when she was a child. It was beloved by all the troops and civilians regardless of their politics, because it spoke to the heart:
http://ingeb.org/...
Lysistrata, in this ancient Greek play where the lead female, Lysistrata leads the women to barricade the public funds building and withhold sex from their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War and secure peace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
All Quiet on the Western Front(1930)Part 1. It's available in 14 parts on youtube.com because it is the classic antiwar film.
http://youtube.com/...
The King of Hearts with Alan Bates and Genevieve Bujold. Antiwar film where French villagers flee and the inmates of the local asylum take on the roles of villagers. I hate to give it away, but Alan Bates decides that war is insane, the inmates of the asylum are sane, and he surrenders, naked-as-a-jaybird, he won't soldier anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Buffy St. Marie sings her poem-song 'Universal Soldier'for Vets:
http://youtube.com/...
Buffy sings for Pete Seeger, 'My Country T'is of Your People You're Dying':
http://www.youtube.com/...
Catch-22, classic antiwar novel and movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Catch-22, Alan Arkin as Yossarian trying to get out of active duty by playing crazy. But to want to get out of active duty proves he is sane so he can't plead insanity. That's the catch, Catch-22.
http://youtube.com/...
Catch-22, Art Garfunkle in 'shameless opportunist' scene, youtube.com:
http://youtube.com/...
Pritzker Military Library, Chicago, homepage. You have to understand war, to win the peace. Or so they say:
http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.o...
Ballad of the Green Berets, in English:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Ballad of the Green Berets, in German:
http://youtube.com/...
War, What is it Good For, Asolutely Nothing! By Edwin Starr:
http://youtube.com/...