In Minnesota, a town of veterans divides over Iraq war

On most winter nights in this northern outpost, as the sun fades below the popple and jackpine trees, folks tend to disperse quietly to the warmth of hearth and ranch home. Or they might retreat to their fish houses on Shagowa Lake, questing for walleye. Or head to the public sauna where they'll pay $5 to escape the cryogenic winds, where they tell stories about the walleye they should have caught but didn't.

But one balmy night last week (21 degrees F.), dozens of residents squeezed into the wood-paneled courtroom at city hall, all focused on one topic: war and peace. Even the town's two cops showed up, standing by with arms tightly crossed, just in case.

The issue: an antiwar resolution quietly passed the previous week by the city council during a sparsely attended meeting. The vote made Ely one of more than 100 cities and towns in the US to take a public stand against war with Iraq. Now, with a group of veterans leading the charge as if it were D-Day all over again, most of the residents stuffed into the courtroom wanted to make Ely the first American city to rescind its antiwar resolution.

The debate that unfolded over the next two hours - and in subsequent days in cafes, shops, and bars - offers a window into wartime sentiment in small-town America. It's also the story of a community grappling with the passions and perspectives forged on all of the 20th century's biggest battlefields, as well as deep in the dangerous iron mines of northern Minnesota, amid one of the planet's great wilderness frontiers.

In much of this debate, it's veterans who hold the most sway. As folks here will remind you, Ely (it rhymes with "steely") sent a bigger portion of its residents off to World War II than any other town in the US. Some 35 percent of Ely-ites fought Hitler or Hirohito.

Many of those fighters in this two-traffic-light town of 3,700 were of tough immigrant stock - Pryzbylskis, Golobichs, Lundstroms, Klingsporns - whose fathers or grandfathers came to toil, and sometimes perish, in the mines. To this day, some residents retain traces of eastern European accents.

More recently, a new wave of immigrants has arrived. These typically more-liberal folks come to live in an underpopulated wilderness that's the gateway to a canoer's paradise - the boundary waters between the US and Canada. In fact, it was a group of activist women, united in the wake of Sen. Paul Wellstone's passing, who originally presented the resolution to the council.

In the debate that ensued, just about everyone in town agreed on one thing: They all wanted peace. They just disagreed over how best to achieve it.

Take local icon Bob Cary, for instance. "The country is in a state of emergency, and something's got to be done," he says. In his first seven decades, Mr. Cary fought the Japanese at Guadalcanal, ran for president on the Independent Fishing Party ticket, learned the language of a local Indian tribe, and painted a giant historical mural downtown.

Sipping his noontime coffee in a vinyl booth at Britton's Cafe, Cary talks about his World War II days. "It was wonderful," he says with an impish grin, "I had an all-expense-paid trip to the islands of the South Pacific."

Actually he fought in some of the toughest battles of the war - and was set to invade the Japanese mainland. Then President Truman dropped the atomic bombs. Cary's view of peace is battle-hardened: "The way I look at it," he says, turning suddenly serious, "when there aren't any more of the other guys standing, that's when you've got peace."

As Cary and others see it, the US is already at war, and it can't afford to shrink from any of its enemies. In Ely, at least, the generation that fought the evils of Nazi Germany seems comfortable with a black-and-white analysis of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

"We waited too long to get Hitler," says Frank Volk, a World War II vet sporting a red satin VFW jacket. "If we hadn't let him get as far as he did, there wouldn't have been a World War II." His unequivocal message: The US shouldn't wait to confront Hussein.

With a round face and warm eyes, the retired mine worker cuts an avuncular figure. But he comes from sturdy stock. His dad once escaped a mine explosion, but got specks of iron ore lodged permanently in his cheek. As a girl, his mother-in-law was smuggled out of Slovenia in a suitcase by her parents as they fled a repressive regime.

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