'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson
~~~~~OOO~~~~~
...twenty kilometres north of Azzano, Italy, in a ground previously presumed to have been occupied by incoming Allied forces in the Second World War, recently, new evidence about the lives of soldiers have been uncovered. A stack of hitherto unknown letters, preserved in a small plastic packet. An astonishing discovery that has miraculously survived the vagaries of nature, they are expected to provide deeper insights into the lives of people hailed as heroes and yet never acknowledged.
Of all the things that come to mind at the mention of a soldier, very few of us think of their lives beyond the field. Very few of us manage to look past the image of a uniformed figure with a gun or a tank, and acknowledge the existence of their parents, family, friends, and lovers.
Despite their simplistic appearance, they serve a powerful reminder of the horrors of war, and of all the reasons we need to stop killing each other.
The letters, evidently written by a pining soldier to their childhood sweetheart, are especially noteworthy...
...it becomes obvious that this poignant tale not only marks the desperate moral crisis those in the front lines face, but also becomes a powerful cry against regimes that carry out unspeakable atrocities in the name of victory and war. It reminds us, that even if we believe that there are no victors in war, we forget, that from the ashen, mutilated remains of long- forgotten bodies rise individual empires like some horrible mockery of a phoenix that feeds on the dead and decaying like the vulture it is. More than that, it speaks of governments and regimes and nations that do not give appropriate dues to those who lived, fought and died for them, and then came home traumatised, shell- shocked, a life destroyed. With time, we have...
...before one is a soldier, one is a child, a friend, and a parent. The writer remembers these with fondness, and it would not be improbable that these memories are the only things that keep them going when everything crumbles around them. It makes you wonder how resilient the human mind is, and how it seeks shelter within itself, and how, in spite of everything, it carves itself an almost safe niche...
...Unni, the man our writer loves, turns out to be equally attached to his family. In this, as in so many other respects, they are equal. It reminds you that these are all ordinary people, who have been plucked, as our soldier says, 'from the warmth of hearth and home,' and it makes you wonder what their folly is. For a person who does not have much higher education, our writer, the soldier, manages to hook us into it, and describe the wretched circumstances with startling accuracy. Among them...
...letters are the most realistic representation of the phrase 'Hope dies last.' In spite of being in a war, with people dying left, right, and centre, the soldier hopes and plans for the future – a future they have no certainty of having. I say 'they' because although it is likeliest the soldier is male – as are all the others of his unit – there is no specification to his gender. Unwittingly, or otherwise, the soldier has thus achieved what many have failed to do – to accept and portray the universality of sorrow, grief and loss. That all the others of their unit stand by them is perhaps the most explicit description of the loyalty of people who you fight with. The soldier was perhaps not far off the mark when they said that comrades are closer than family...
...last couple of letters are the heart- breaking cry of a person about to die. Humans cling onto life, even when death happens to be the better option. It is not just the cry of some soldier, it is the cry of every person we fail, every day – people who do not have enough to eat, who do not have a home, who do not have friends, who are trapped in troubling situations and abusive circumstances, and people who have no one to turn to other than jump to their death. It is the most hauntingly beautiful calls for life, for spring in the middle of snowy winter, for water among the Saharan sands, for relief in war.
Excerpts from 'At War: The Chronicles of a Conscripted Soldier'
Compiled and edited by Professor F. Dangerfield, HOD (History), University of Columbia
Published January, 2014
~~~~~OOO~~~~~
Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
He's young; he hated war; how should he die
When cruel old campaigners win safe through?
But death replied: "I choose him." So he went,
And there was silence in the summer night;
Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.
The Death Bed by Siegfried Sassoon
YOU ARE READING
At War
Romance"Revenge by young men is considered victory, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose know better." -Chief Seattle This is an anti- war epistolary novella written for ONC 2022. Prompts 5 and...
