How the Moultons Made Peace with the War

For all the justifiable talk of heroics that swirls around Seth, no one in his own family would want to characterize him as a martyr. He is intelligent, to be sure, and generous, but he can be stubborn, and on occasion self-involved. He is used to getting his way, and it is obvious that the Moulton household often centers on him and his ambitions.

As they were growing up, Seth and his younger brother, Cyrus, often squabbled, as brothers do. But in their case the fights were intensified by their markedly different personalities. "I was more methodical, and he was more confrontational and would never take no for an answer," says Cyrus, 27, who lives in Portland, Maine, and works for the environmental group Island Institute. "It would bother me that he needed to be the best and wouldn't settle for anything else. It would bother him that I wasn't as assertive."

Despite his youthful drive and restlessness, Seth remained close to home, first at Andover, then at Harvard, where he majored in physics and quickly established himself on campus, rowing crew and playing organ at the Memorial Church. It was there that he met and became friends with the church's minister, Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes. The two spent hours discussing questions of sacrifice and duty. Through those talks, Seth explains by e-mail, he realized that he "didn't want to grow up and have to say that somebody else had fought for my freedom."

Seth was one of three students chosen to speak at his class's graduation. On June 7, 2001, from the south porch of the Memorial Church (which is dedicated to the memory of Harvard alumni who lost their lives in World War I), he looked out on an audience of 30,000 elated parents, friends, and fellow graduates, and decried the complacency and selfishness of his peers. "Many of our fathers and mothers stood steadfast in the midst of Vietnam, fighting their own battles of duty and protest. But what is the cause for our generation? Where is our fight?" he asked. "We live in a Western world dominated by contentment, and threatened by mediocrity. The great challenge for us now is to make lives that are good, lives that are great. We have the capacity, but do we have the will, and the ambition, to achieve greatness?"

Ten months later, in March 2002, Lynn and Tom attended another commencement, this one in Quantico, Virginia, for Seth's graduation from Officer Candidate School, where he received his commission as a second lieutenant. "Tom and I had to be proud of him for successfully completing something that was so different from any challenge he had met before," says Lynn. "On the other hand, these accomplishments were not achievements we had ever valued. I hated the haircut and the concept of walking in straight lines, changing direction when everyone else did." During the ceremony, a guest speaker, a general, told the audience how proud he was of the "group of trained killers" before him. Hearing those words, Lynn recalls, "I actually felt the room spin."