1.    My name is Bill Durland. I am a member of the local planning committee
for Eyes Wide Open.
2.     I am here on behalf of the Colorado Springs Quaker Meeting, the
Veterans for Peace and the Christian Peacemakers Teams. I am also the
co-chair of the Colorado Springs American Civil Liberties Union and a member
of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, and the American Friends
Service Committee
3.    What I have to say here today is my own reflection on memories of war
and peace gathered from a long life of 75 years, including being fired upon,
and tear-gassed with my wife in Palestine for five hours in the middle of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,  and suffering through the death of CPTer
George Weber during our tour in Iraq just before the war in 2003, and in
memoriy of my friend Major Michael Martinez, age 43 of Missouri, a JAG
officer at Ft. Caron whose boots are here. He died in Iraq in 2005.
4.    My story is also affected by what is happening here in the present
with the reactions to Eyes Wide Open by the negative criticisms I have heard
and the political refusals to support this memorial to the dead in Iraq;
just the latest example of the dehumanization of human beings caught up in
the evils of war. 
5.    I was drafted into the U.S. army in early 1954, a Johnny-come-lately
to the Korean War.  I knew I couldn't kill anyone on orders, but I was also
patriotically American and was told by my church, my government, my school,
and my family that what I was doing was really anti-war. During my tour of
duty in Germany, my sergeant was killed and I mourned his death, the Cold
War with the Soviets having its price for me.
6.    Towards the end of 1969, in the throes of the Vietnam War, my
transformation from anti-war to pro-peace became a conviction, spiritually
Christianized when I accepted religious pacifism as a way of life against
all wars, even though shortly before I had completed a reserve military duty
as a captain in JAG. I asked myself: How can I be true to my convictions as
a Christian and to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, if I believed as
he did in loving our enemies but persisted in killing them at the same time?
7.    So I am here today, as anti-all-war and pro-all-peace, having been
against t Hitler's Wars, the Vietnam War, and all the Iraqi and Middle
Eastern Wars as the cultural dehumanization of civilization, no matter on
which side you are. Wars are our enemy, not each other!
8.    So that explains how a Christian pacifist against all wars can join
here today with others of many convictions to respect these fallen human
beings who also died, many of them from strongly and conscientiously held
beliefs and practices. Why wouldn't I be here? How could I miss it? How
could anyone stay away and not support it?
9.    But I believe some have done just that, because they don¹t understand
how they may join with peace activists to mourn these dead;  or how they can
be here to love humanity and not kill them at the same time., if only with
their words of derogation.
10.    If we are controversial, and these boots are controversial, then so
is all life. If what we do here is undermining the soldiers and being
disrespectful of their lives, as has been charged, and as the absentee City
Council claimed, why are we here gathered with others, strangers and lovers
of this memorial today on this holy ground?
11.    In speaking for myself it is because I am a veteran, I am a
Christian, I am a peacemaker, and I share today my life, my light in our
candlelight vigil last night, and my love, as we placed these boots and
shoes on the ground, with each and every American and human being
memorialized in this great one-time and soon to be missed event, as a
tribute to their humanization and for the hope for a future and everlasting
peace, justice and liberty. This is our prayer. AMEN