Back then, it was a rite of passage. Today, sandbox therapy is a standard modality in most pediatric psychology practices.
As impressionable young boys, we would set up elaborate battlefields in the sand box with foxholes, bunkers, trenches, moats, the whole enchilada ~ and then deploy bags of small plastic soldiers... green Americans versus light gray Nazis.
In a capture the flag motif, we would lace the battlefield with strategically placed firecrackers, intertwine all the fuses into one long slow burner, light it and step back. In the ensuing carnage, the carpet bomb effect was the only way that we as young boys could process the atrocities we watched on nightly television coming into our living rooms from the steaming jungles of Vietnam.
I remember the evil looking SS Nazi officer suddenly disappearing ~ the sadistic monster becoming just another victim of war. All that remained of him were the goose stepping boots attached to the plastic stand with a wisp of smoke rising from a hole in the sand where he once stood.
As the deafening explosion and smoke subsided, we surveyed the destruction before us. It was all over before we knew it and there was nothing we could do. We felt somehow powerless as we looked at the broken bodies of the little green and gray army men. You never forget things like that ~ for in that moment I knew in my heart I could never kill another human being or be a soldier.
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