The Free Press article: “This Week in American History: A Soldier’s Wife”, is an interesting piece that makes one consider war in a new way. It is a well known fact that soldiers suffer greatly during wars, and undergo great sacrifice, pain, and trial to fight for their country.

However, what is less often remarked on is that families of said soldiers give up a lot too. The pain of losing a family member, and the strain of wondering and worrying about those at the front is  staggering.

Worry can build and build, growing heavier and heavier to shoulder, until eventually you have lost yourself and everything you stood for.

This article does a good job at illustrating this, and it does so through the story of the Wainwrights.

Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright and Adele Holley Wainwright were a married couple living in America during the time of World War 1. When Jonathan was taken prisoner to the Japanese, and tortured, Adele stewed at home and worried. It tore her apart.

This article illustrated just how trying connection can be during war, and how love and worry can simply consume one. The stark message and new angle was striking to me, and helped me see that the effects of war were even more far-reaching than I anticipated. I did not realize that worrying like Adele had could eat away at her in such a way, and probably had the same effect on many others too.

War and violence spread like disease and pollute those even indirectly connected to them. Like a powerful octopus extending its far-reaching tentacles, the effects of violence reach farther and deeper than anyone could anticipate.

“She worried so much about this worthless carcass of mine while I was gone that now she is sick”, Jonathan said, expressing his struggles to help Adele after his return to her.

As the Free Press so eloquently put it: “For our freedom, the Wainwrights and many others sacrificed their own. May we never forget it.”