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“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” So went the famed Vietnam War-era protest lyrics first sung by the Temptations.
Looked at a certain way, however, like so many Americans, war has been the backdrop of my life. After Pearl Harbor, my father, 35, promptly volunteered for what was then the Army Air Corps; my mother, a cartoonist, would, in her own way,

