`I'd go to war with any of those guys'

On Sept. 10, Sam Gottesman and four of his closest friends -- all of them returning starters on the offensive line of the Penn football team -- sat down to watch Monday Night Football and talk with a Daily Pennsylvanian reporter for a story featured in today's football preview.

Throughout the game, the five senior linemen mused about football, about respect and, at one point, about the camaraderie that has grown between them coming into their fourth season together.

"I'd go to war with any of those guys," Gottesman said, "and I know they'd do the same for me."

It was a quote full of symbolism, describing the trust, loyalty and bond that grows between teammates.

Gottesman's words also showed that, in an America which had enjoyed peace for so long, the gridiron had taken the place of the battlefield.

Come sunrise the following day, however, and his sentence was transformed into a frighteningly literal phrase.

Tuesday, Sept. 11, was unlike any day we had ever seen. And since then, America has lived under the threat of what can be considered no less than war.

The last time this kind of atmosphere gripped the nation, our enemy was Iraq, and I was 11 years old.

Of the few memories I have of that conflict, the most vivid is of sitting in my fifth-grade classroom, writing letters to our soldiers in the Persian Gulf.

Until last Tuesday, I never thought it a possibility that the fifth graders of today might have to do the same for me.

But last night, before Congress and the nation, President Bush announced that he had placed the United States Armed Forces on high alert for what he said would be "not one battle, but a lengthy campaign" against terrorism and those nations which support it.

"We will direct every resource at our command," he said, including every necessary weapon of war, "to the disruption and defeat of the global terror network."

Like many Americans my age, hearing those words from the leader of the free world made me struggle with a potent question:

If my country calls during this impending conflict -- to attack or defend -- how will I answer?

It is an especially difficult question for us, a generation now at fighting age who have learned both the honor of duty from our grandparents' generation and the horrors of war from the generation of our parents.

I do not yet know the answer for myself, nor do I think I will until Uncle Sam comes knocking on my door.

My one wish is that I never have to decide.

I don't want the words Sam Gottesman uttered on an innocent Monday night, whose meaning was terribly mangled on a Tuesday morning, to come any closer to reality for us.

Neither does Gottesman himself.

I met with Sam yesterday to let him know I would be using his quote for this column, and as we spoke for a while about the past 10 days, I could tell he shares the same clenched feeling in his chest as we all do right now.

"It's tough to put in words the way that you feel," he said after pausing to take a deep breath.

That is definitely the truth. It is easy, though, to explain our hopes for the future.

Sam, myself and I'm sure countless others pray that the only battlefields we ever see are on the gridiron, and the only wars we ever experience start and end with the referee's whistle.

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