The glorification of war can oft be found in books, on film, and throughout video games. Keeping the manageability of scope in mind, I'll limit my premise to the written word here, and we'll focus on books. I've read several (fiction, for this enterprise) which were thematically based around war, and have found there to be a common ground in many of them which were written by veterans: Condemnation.
A sort of "what in the hell are we even doing here?" always seems to become the mantra as the story progresses. We are given a daguerrotype of human suffering rather than a playbill for the honor and panache of armed conflict. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front does (in my opinion) the best job of this: highlighting the initial gusto with which young men go to war, then supplanting that with misery and despair and futility. Remarque would know, having spent nearly two years in the hellish trenches of WW1.
The ultimately ludicrous nature of what is happening in the midst of war is best captured by Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, in the sort of stark human experience language and expression that he is uncannily capable of. Having deployed with the 423rd Infantry Regiment to Europe in '44 as an advance scout, he really did have a first-hand perspective of the situation. Given his sublime insight into the nature of the human condition, his account of the sheer folly of the whole endeavor should not be discounted by anyone.
Occasionally there is represented a sort of justifiable violence- always perpetrated in the aide of comrades and brothers in arms, rather than for the goals of the state. We see this in Flight of the Intruder when Coonts has his protagonist, Jake Grafton (essentially Coonts himself, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross, and flew 2 combat tours over 'Nam in the A6), fly one last renegade mission over Vietnam with the ultimate goal of saving future A6 jockeys from his own experiences and turmoil.
While having never served in declared combat, I have deployed numerous times to numerous theatres, and found myself asking many of these same "what in the hell are we even doing here?" questions. The answers one comes up with on the dark nights are not often conciliatory. Who knows, maybe I'll write about it some day...
If you ever decide to write the book, I'll read it. In my fantasy books, there is often in a way war of good against evil.
ReplyDeleteYah, well, it's like Norm MacDonald says: “It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”
DeleteJD, you should put your experiences to paper - or in some readable format. True stories make a difference.
ReplyDelete