@snood,
A thoughtful comment.
Anyone who delights in war with no personal risk is a truly vile miscreant.
Anyone who delights in war with complete personal risk is an interesting character.
That being said, combat seems to be in our nature. Prehistoric warriors as well as those who followed them from Sparta, Persia, Crusader Europe, The Ottoman Empire, Japan, and WWI and WWII Europe all came back with horrendous wounds and telling the same horrible tales. Artists have repeatedly tried to tell the world how horrible war is, and yet war remains. The men you met have a wise tale to tell but it will not be heeded.
There is no novel or movie possibly conceived that will rid the world of it's penchant for war. If WWI couldn't do it none can.
We are a warring primate species.
So, the notion of ending war, for the foreseeable future, is ridiculous. The notion of controlling situations that lead to war is not.