A Moving Discovery
What a discovery I made in a book by Laurie Lee. One reads so much about war, one knows how clearly it has been framed by filmmakers, poets and many others, that I rather felt it a topic that can no longer move me afresh.
Yet deep in Lee's `A Moment of War', his memoir about taking part in the Spanish Civil War in 1937/8 was this. No grandstanding, no chest puffing, no swagger, just searing honesty about the mucky process of taking a life in combat.
`I headed for the old barn where I'd spent my first night. I lay in a state of sick paralysis. I had killed a man, and remembered his shocked, angry eyes. There was nothing I could say to him now. Tanks rattled by and cries receded. I began to have hallucinations and breaks in the brain. I lay there knowing neither time nor place.....Was this then what I had come for, and all my journey had meant - to smudge out the life of an unknown young man in a blur of panic which in no way could affect victory or defeat?'
Jihadists, would-be American Snipers, cadets, soldiers, patriots: read these words and think, that when all is done it might just come down to `smudging out a life in a blur of panic'.
Yet deep in Lee's `A Moment of War', his memoir about taking part in the Spanish Civil War in 1937/8 was this. No grandstanding, no chest puffing, no swagger, just searing honesty about the mucky process of taking a life in combat.
`I headed for the old barn where I'd spent my first night. I lay in a state of sick paralysis. I had killed a man, and remembered his shocked, angry eyes. There was nothing I could say to him now. Tanks rattled by and cries receded. I began to have hallucinations and breaks in the brain. I lay there knowing neither time nor place.....Was this then what I had come for, and all my journey had meant - to smudge out the life of an unknown young man in a blur of panic which in no way could affect victory or defeat?'
Jihadists, would-be American Snipers, cadets, soldiers, patriots: read these words and think, that when all is done it might just come down to `smudging out a life in a blur of panic'.
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Carol Anne
(new)
Feb 01, 2015 04:54AM
it is brilliant and gut wrenching. Don't think the jihadists would feel anything though, fanatics lack the ability.
reply
|
flag
The challenge for a jihadi is the admitting to both the blur of panic and that what they are doing will make no difference...those you hear from in the media are so intolerant that they lack the emotional depth to acknowledge the futility of killing for political or religious reasons or any other reason. Their thinking is isolated in its intensity to meet their own ends and disregard every non believer in the planet.
simple and moving. Yes, what all his journey's had meant. a comment on many things.
"Hallucinations and breaks in the brain." Surely hints of the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that likely went on to plague this man. The American Psychiatric Association first identified PTSD in their third version of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders only in 1980. For far too long men, breaking down in the face of war, were considered to "lack spine." We now understand that PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.It goes without saying that I do not condone fanaticism of any sort. But when you consider the extreme violence suffered in Iraq with the result that over one hundred fifty thousand civilians (conservative estimate) were killed in a country reduced to shambles, it strikes me as odd that we are shocked and surprised by the grotesque acts playing out in the aftermath.
Many of us watch horror films, war films, etc for pleasure. How do people unfamiliar with this form of relaxation separate fantasy from reality?
I really liked A Moment of War. I know there were questions raised as to the truth of Lee's account; for what it's worth, I thought it had the ring of truth. I also liked the straightforwardness and lack of bravado of the book. Interesting he wrote it so many years later, as if it was something he wanted to get off his chest.
Tim, I only just discovered Laurie Lee. "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" He should be taught in school curricula as he writes beautifully and yet so simply.
