'Keep Me Going'
I have a little prayer, my sometimes mantra, "Keep me going, Lord." This little refrain sounded over and over again in my mind and heart as my friend Fern Van Gieson and I hurried down to Wellington, Kansas, 30 miles south of Wichita after receiving the call from Jim Douglass. Jim had alerted us that the train would probably be arriving in Wellington about 7 a.m. We had to check out the tracks and take care of other details, so we were on our way by 4:30 a.m. Thus it was dark and quite chilly, but our anticipation was high. Other women would be waiting at other points. No women on the train, I thought, but plenty alongside the tracks.
By well after 7 a.m., though, six trains had come and gone. It was very close to 8 a.m., and I knew I should be checking with someone. Just one more train, Fern, then we'll go. And with that the blinking arms came down again, the Santa Fe engines entered the crossing followed by the gleaming, glistening bomb caskets.
We were jubilant, awed, and overwhelmed. I called out the letters and numbers to Fern, who scribbled anxiously and grabbed an occasional quick glance at the cars. Jim Douglass' statement that the train was "bringing Auschwitz to the people" came to mind.
I had seen the ovens at Sachsenhausen, 30 minutes from East Berlin. The ovens were in an out-of-the-way spot on the grounds, and our disarmament tour group had to walk across the compound to see them. I wasn't prepared for my reaction. The casual chatter stopped abruptly as we came upon them. The only sounds in the cold, damp November air were deep breaths and gasps. Low murmurs broke the silence, but no one approached the ovens.
Nausea, lightheadedness, and a feeling of being kicked in the stomach caused me to turn away and step back. As I stood quaking and shivering and probing my thoughts, a fellow traveler put his arms around me and said, "I've seen all the camps, and it's always the same. I've never gotten used to it."
All through Germany I wondered, "Did they know? What would I have done?" Everything is so antiseptic at the camps now; all manicured for the tourists and the peace people from the "free world." The barbed wire, watch towers, barracks—and railroad tracks—are all there.
We make our death trains white and clean and gleaming, silently clicking their way through America's villages, towns, and cities. But the same rails that transport our weapons also bind the peace people together as never before. Now I can walk two blocks from my house to the Santa Fe tracks, stand on the rail, and join myself to other peacemakers in Wichita, Cheyenne, Whitefish, and Bangor. The tracks that bring me despair can also bring me hope.
"Keep me going, Lord."
Mary Harren
Wichita, Kansas
Seeing is Realizing
When Ground Zero called Fr. Bob Landewe and Hugh Guthrie, my phone rang next in Aurora, Missouri. I called Marilyn, who made the signs to carry, and the ripples went further: the few of us who waited for the White Train in the cold and darkness, the well-wishers who were vocal, the silently assenting ones, then those whose attention we at least caught briefly.
Being a retired housewife-grandma, I don't have at my command the statistics, the technical words. But the feelings I can handle:
Normal trains go by, then this white nightmare that is real. Seeing is more than believing. It's realizing. We're not shivering from the cold anymore. Staring at this monstrous, costly, death-dealing stuff going by, I sweat a little. The tension wrings a loud and angry cry from Fr. Bob, "Jesus, be Lord! Come conquer this evil!"
Just passing through, this train endangers us if there's an accident. The deadly waste from making these things pollutes our world. And these weapons are meant to go off! What a waste, what a perversion of our resources!
We've got to do something now. Is it too late? Where's a Paul Revere to wake all the people who are home watching the Saturday night movie undisturbed?
Can we make the person-in-the-street, the person-at-the-polls stop and think and understand?
We go away grim but full of new resolve. We're not alone. There's a Ground Zero community clear away in Washington state. There are others. We'll work at it as long as it takes, though we know it won't be easy.
Helen Chudomelka
Aurora, Missouri
Small, Sincere ... and Hope-Filled
In the crisp, pre-dawn hours on the bluff of the Mississippi, near the railroad bridge crossing the big river, 30 people formed a circle of prayer, gathering strength from each other to face the White Train.
In Memphis our gatherings of conscience are often described as those of a "small but sincere group." Such was the case when the death train made its way through our conservative city on its officially unannounced incursion. The eight-foot-high, chain-link fence that separated us from the tracks was not an insurmountable barrier, but no civil disobedience had been planned. Besides, for hours the news media had waited on the other side, gaining access for cameras and tripods through a bent-back portion of the fence used by transient rail-riders.
Local police and government officials were also there to watch. They had been surprised when we advised them of the train's expected arrival.
When that slow-moving, sterile-looking train finally began its journey through our city at 12:15 p.m., I was surprised by its apparent vulnerability, yet chillingly aware of the guards with weapons ready inside the three turreted cars. My emotions peaked as the train moved by. It wasn't fear, nor any malice for the people aboard. It was just sheer frustration; the knowledge of the destructive capacity of each of those warheads and the realization that I alone could not prevent their passage.
I clung to the top rung of the fence, pleading, crying out. I wanted to leap the fence and run to the train. I wanted to pummel its sleek white sides. I wanted to do something to assuage the despair that threatened to rise up, a despair I had first felt two years before while sailing with my family in our live-aboard home in Puget Sound. There we had lived in a region of unparalleled beauty but had had to share the waters with Trident submarines, minesweepers, and aircraft carriers. We sailed under skies often darkened by the sophisticated bombers that maneuvered above as we navigated among islands, some given over entirely to weapons storage.
But I did not leap that fence, and that numbing despair did not take hold as it once had. Instead, in tremulous but ever-strengthening voices, our "small but sincere group" sang together the hope-filled and familiar words of "We Shall Overcome."
Clare Hanrahan
Memphis, Tennessee
Stranger in our Town
It was a warm autumn day in Tupelo, Mississippi: clear, sunny, glorious. The people of Tupelo went about their business peacefully, untroubled and unaware of the cargo that was soon to pass through their town.
I had grown truly attached to Tupelo in the six years we had lived here. My children, 5 and 7, knew this as their only home. I felt warm and happy, surrounded by my friends on the street corner by the railroad crossing. Then it appeared, blowing its whistle defiantly. I gripped the arm of Rev. "Bo" Holloman standing next to me.
The stark white cars barreled by. I was unprepared for the bone-penetrating chill that shook me. Tears welled up. A sickening knot gripped my stomach. The realization that there in front of me were 200 nuclear bombs, each several times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, pierced my heart like a stiletto blade. Gaunt, empty, cold death stared at us derisively: hundreds of Hiroshimas on this train ... hundreds of Hiroshimas on this train ...
Oh, what evil we humans have wrought. God, have mercy on us sinners!
Chris Peeler
Tupelo, Mississippi
A Walk Toward the Kingdom
I walked toward the kingdom the other night.
My walk took me to the railroad tracks at 10th Avenue North and 27th Street in Birmingham, Alabama, to vigil by the White Train. When I got there around 9 p.m. I found a community of almost 70 people. They were young and old, black and white, male and female, from many beliefs and walks of life. It was a gentle community that had gathered to witness to their love of human life and their hope for peace. A college student with a glowing face said later, "It was the first time in my life I had ever had a chance to risk something for what I really believe. It strengthened my faith."
We built a small fire to keep warm. The train never came. About 2:30 a.m., when we were fairly sure it had gone another way, we prayed together and left. But we had come. We met each other, sang, visited, got to know each other a little better, and knew we were where we ought to have been that night.
The train was re-routed, we believe, to avoid us. An Atlanta media helicopter took its picture far to the south in Georgia. A great deal of effort had been expended to keep that train secret from us in Birmingham. If the train is okay, why was it taken so far out of its way? Why wasn't it rolled by on the most logical tracks, the shortest route to its destination, where we were waiting to see it? I was angry at the secrecy that was present like a wall that evening, a wall between us and them, whoever they are. I had to pray for nonviolence in my heart.
The train never came. But we did. I know others who will join us when it comes our way again. For me, it was walking toward the kingdom to go to the railroad tracks. It was a gentle, clean, very clear, and precious experience.
How can a time caught up in something so tragic have been a time of joy? Well, it just was. I loved the people I met there, and I was glad to be a part of that community. When one walks toward the kingdom, one never knows where one will turn up.
Mary Dell Miles
Birmingham, Alabama
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