I used to think I would make a good soldier. I even got to the stage as a young of applying for the Royal Marines. Something got the better of me and I did not go for the interview. I know people who have joined the armed service. Men, who have gone through basic training, even becoming elite soldiers joining the SAS. We had some form of remembrance for the Falklands War just recently I was reminded of someone who was an elite soldier and during the Falklands conflict spent much of his time behind enemy lines calling down artillery support. Like many war time men and women he didn’t talk much about his war.
I often ask myself, ‘Am I capable of going to war’. What would make me take up arms and go into a conflict? I was a young man during the CND (Campaign against Nuclear Disarmament). I had the badge. The symbol on the badge was the same symbol seen on the helmets of many young men who were sent to Vietnam. Greenham Common women became united in spirit with their desire to see nuclear weapons removed from this country. My grandfather shared his war with me, we sat up all night until dawn broke the next day and he unburdened himself. He showed me the wounds he received; he told me of how brutal trench warfare was and how he took lives because that was his job. He trained as a machine gunner and along with colleagues injured and killed many other men who had also gone to war. My father never talked about the war.
Would I have made a good Marine? It’s not a question easily answered. I’m of a mind that I cannot point a gun at someone. And yet I know that I have never been tested as people are being tested today. I don’t think it’s a question of masculinity, or of courage – having too much or too little – maybe I feel safe and therefor don’t need to pick up a gun. Patriotism inflamed the country during the world wars; maybe the Second World War was the only just war. How people saw war over the decades is of its own time. And as a consequence Empire building, poverty, valour and heroism all escalated the male understanding of death and glory and men went to war.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred: Lord Tennyson
The power of communication, instant news keeps us better informed. We are devouring information on conflict, of countries with internal turmoil, other bodies called fundamentalist seeking specific religious outcomes. Environmental conflict that has scarred the world we all share. There are those who seek violence and who are prepared to be the geneses of that violence. I suppose democracy and freedom allows for a certain level of violence. But what about the innocent, the child, the mother, the elderly, those who are living with special needs, the carers that look after people, the carers who look after Gods created creature. The word itself, War, has nothing lovely about it.
British politician Edmund Burke: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for a good man to do nothing.”
Wikipedia
“Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering to slaughter. If you say, ’But we knew nothing of this’, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?” Proverbs 24:11-12
I still have to answer my own question and as I watch the news my heart cries out for justice.
Image credit: ehmitrich via Unsplash
