![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumH/T to soldiergrrrl
Their War
It's simplistic, and shallow, but it raises some interesting points.
War is one of those things that, if you haven't been, you can't understand.
You can read about it. The Red Badge of Courage, Generals Die in Bed, The Old Breed, Dog Tags, The Soldier Prize will all give you a taste of what it was like.
You can add Birdy, and Catch-22, and Rumors of War, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Odd Shot in Anger, The Good Soldier and any number of history books.
It's a pale shadow of what it's like. Even someone like me who had a "quiet" personal war sees things, feels things knows things that are seen, at best, as through a glass darkly to those who have never been there. "Seeing the elephant" changes you.
I'll offer up this excerpt, from the article.
Col. David Close watches over the training of Marines such as Tuyishimire.
"When I think of patriotism," the colonel says, "I think of selfless service. I think of the people that are dying." Suddenly, his eyes redden. His mouth quivers. "I have a hard time with the families left behind." The words stop coming.
He's a tall, rangy man, hair bristling gray. He looks like a man who should be carrying a sword, not fighting tears. When he speaks again, his voice shakes. "The word patriotism rings hollow with that. There are no words for it. It can't be explained."
His voice steadies as he describes a scene that movies have made familiar: a recent death notification on the base, the official car driving through a neighborhood of enlisted family housing on a Saturday morning, the young women who were outside setting up a yard sale all going still, waiting to see where the car would stop.
"That's patriotism,"
soldiergrrrl Their War
It's simplistic, and shallow, but it raises some interesting points.
War is one of those things that, if you haven't been, you can't understand.
You can read about it. The Red Badge of Courage, Generals Die in Bed, The Old Breed, Dog Tags, The Soldier Prize will all give you a taste of what it was like.
You can add Birdy, and Catch-22, and Rumors of War, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Odd Shot in Anger, The Good Soldier and any number of history books.
It's a pale shadow of what it's like. Even someone like me who had a "quiet" personal war sees things, feels things knows things that are seen, at best, as through a glass darkly to those who have never been there. "Seeing the elephant" changes you.
I'll offer up this excerpt, from the article.
Col. David Close watches over the training of Marines such as Tuyishimire.
"When I think of patriotism," the colonel says, "I think of selfless service. I think of the people that are dying." Suddenly, his eyes redden. His mouth quivers. "I have a hard time with the families left behind." The words stop coming.
He's a tall, rangy man, hair bristling gray. He looks like a man who should be carrying a sword, not fighting tears. When he speaks again, his voice shakes. "The word patriotism rings hollow with that. There are no words for it. It can't be explained."
His voice steadies as he describes a scene that movies have made familiar: a recent death notification on the base, the official car driving through a neighborhood of enlisted family housing on a Saturday morning, the young women who were outside setting up a yard sale all going still, waiting to see where the car would stop.
"That's patriotism,"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 03:57 pm (UTC)Most outstanding explanation of war, ever!
mojo sends
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:55 pm (UTC)At so many others, no.
Neil Gaiman said that this post of mine explained things better than any other he'd read. His more telling (and apt) comment (fond as I am to have had his praise) was this one, My father, who was in the British Army, doing National Service as a young man, once described war to me as "long periods of waiting around, punctuated by an occasional brief confusion of violence, which was what the waiting was for. Then it all goes back to waiting again". And I thought that probably that was probably how it was for the Roman troops marching through Britain two thousand years ago...
Wilfred Owens, Apologia pro poemate meo catches some of it.
War is big. Really big. Big like the universe is big.
I wish to God I'd never gone.
I don't know that I'd trade having gone, for much of anything. Yeah, some of what I got out of it sucks (I still don't sleep so well, and I'm moodier, and more snappish that I was), but there are ways in which I a better person too.
If no one ever had to do it again, I'd be happy.
I can't explain it.
They've seen the elephant.
TK