winterbadger | Entries tagged with war

A thank you to my relatives, including my dad, Kenneth Franklin Spoor, and his brothers Don and Jack, who served in World War II, and my grandfather, Nathaniel Burton Paradise, and great-uncle Robert Campbell Paradise, who served in World War I. And to all my friends and acquaintances who have served, and continue to serve, our country, in uniform and out. And to all those I do not know who have given (one way or another) their lives and skills and hearts, their blood and bone, their todays, and many of them their tomorrows too, to defend our country.

I'm sure it's a hope not likely to be fulfilled, but I hope that the war (for such it was, whatever we call it) that we withdrew from this year is the last that we leap into, heedless of the cost to ourselves and others, for no reason of need or national safety, but just to please the crabbed egos and fears of proud, pointless men who never took the step into danger they were happy to send others on. And may the war we remain engaged in end as soon as can be.

Current Mood: sad

I don't, in the normal course of things, read a lot of sermons. But I think this one is rather good.

Current Mood: impressed

There was an excellent piece this morning on NPR on the experience of combat, a profile of a new book on a unit's experience in Afghanistan. As a thank you to Mr Junger for his book and a salute to the men of the 173rd, my poems for today come from another one man who came to South Asia and saw the glory of war, but who learned its true bitterness only later. <lj-cut>

Rudyard Kipling made a telling observation about warfare in what is now the murderous borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I expect a good many of the men and women who are serving out there now are reading Kipling and know this poem.

A scrimmage in a Border Station—
       A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
       Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
       No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
       Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.

The whole poem, "Arithmetic on the Frontier" can be found on Wikisource.

Kipling also wrote a piece called "The King's Pilgrimage" after King George V visited the graves of troops from throughout the British Empire who fell in France and Belgium in World War I. It ends

And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground
About a carven stone,
And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross
Where high and low are one.

And there was grass and the living trees,
And the flowers of the spring,
And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas
That ever called him King.

'Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red Rivers spring,
Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served their King.

All that they had they gave - they gave -
In sure and single faith.
There can no knowledge reach the grave
To make them grudge their death
Save only if they understood
That, after all was done,
We they redeemed denied their blood
And mocked the gains it won.

Current Mood: sad

I'm reading an article on Arlington Cemetary (which article is quite fascinating, and which I will address itself later), and it mentions just briefly in passing that in in the month of Grant's 1864 offensive that resulted in the battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Petersburg, the USA and CSA suffered 82,000 casualties.

In one month.

The US has suffered 31,557 wounded and 4.362 dead in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. In Afghanistan, 4,434 US servicemembers have been wounded since 2001 and 918 killed.

In other words, in eight years of war in two countries, the United States has taken roughly the same losses that the US Army alone (setting aside our Confederate brothers) took in ONE MONTH of combat in the Civil War.

Just a reminder: our population today is 304 million. In 1864, it was around 31 million. We have nearly ten times as many people today as we did then.

As always when I am struck by these sorts of numbers, I am not meaning by any means to denigrate the loss of any man or woman serving in our armed forces today. Every life is precious, especially those of people who are willing to go into harm's way for our country.

No, I am more struck by how irresolute and easily cowed I feel as if our country is today.

On D-Day alone, over 6,600 US personnel were killed or wounded. In the Second Battle of the Marne in 1917, in three weeks, the American Expeditionary Force took over 12,000 casualties. Recently the news media were wringing their hands because the US lost (I think it was) 14 soldiers and airmen in one week, repeating over and over again that it was the most grievous loss we had suffered in that campaign. Yes, that's true. It's also infinitesimal compared to actual losses we have taken in real wars. Those are 14 deaths that are tragic, 14 lives that can never be lived out and fully shared with their families and friends. But there's also a sense of proportion that I feel has been lost, a sense of understanding that I think seems to have passed.

We are at war. We are fighting enemies that, quite seriously, wish our destruction and will do everything in their considerable, if asymmetric power, to carry it out. Why do we think this will be cheap and easy? Why are we so willing to shrink from a loss that, devastating as it is individually, is so little compared to what we have withstood in other causes when we were, arguably, less threatened?

Current Mood: puzzled

14/50: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East ( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

Two years old, and Grauniad hyperbole instead of terribly thoughtful analysis, but entertaining none the less, if not least for this passage:
( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

I'm posting this so as to remind myself to go back and read it.

from the Washington Post

After three years, there are at least 550,000 veterans of the Iraq war. The Washington Post interviewed 100 of them -- many of whom were still in the service, others who weren't -- to hear about what their war was like and how the transition home has been.

Their answers were as varied as their experiences. But a constant theme through the interviews was that the American public is largely unaffected by the war, and, despite round-the-clock television and Internet exposure, doesn't understand what it's like.

You can't understand unless you were there .

Current Mood: sad

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"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

..."and you [sleeping] there like a winter badger."

Entries tagged with war

before the day is over...

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30 Poems: Numbers 10 and 11

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is war really football? or futbol?

good article spotted by didotwite

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