About the contributor

i'm not interested in the war really; i'm just haunted by the way my mother spoke so simply about what i thought of at the time as a very simple experience. but since I've had a child of my own, i begin to get an inkling of what it must have been like to think both you and your child were going to die and to shelter him with your body. i expect many mothers have this experience, and do it, and die; so we don't have their testimony.