A few days ago I clicked on a radio interview concerning Siegfried Sassoon, the English poet who wrote so powerfully about his combat experiences in World War One. The specific subject was a poem called Atrocities, which was edited before publication to remove some of the most blunt and brutal lines. It was, after all, war time. Here is a reading of the poem and the interview:
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28243999
As the BBC writes: [The original] “version was heavily censored by publishers, with euphemisms such as ‘How did you do them in?’ replacing ‘How did you kill them?’, and other lines removed altogether.”
The subject is the slaughter of prisoners.
The story of Sassoon’s poem reminded me of an experience of an uncle of mine who fought in another war, in another time, in a different part of the world.
When I was a small child, when he came home from this “different” war, I distinctly remember him saying that in that war, in that campaign, they took no prisoners because they were short of rations and would have had to share them.
And then, with a gleam in his eye that I have never forgotten, he told us that the enemy were killed with knives. I don’t recall exactly why this was so, but I remember the gleam.
My uncle was rather a docile sort who was known for meekly taking orders from his strong-willed wife. People always described him as good natured and a hard worker, if not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
God bless his soul, he passed on some years ago. And he was good natured. I don’t recall him ever behaving aggressively towards anyone, or even raising his voice.
I really believe that if he had never been a combat soldier that gleam would never have arisen in his eyes.
What then had happened to him during those years of war? Was it fear, hardship, semi-starvation, the pressure of kill or be killed combat? Of course. But it was something else, I believe: The innate ferocity of Cain, a latent or if you will original streak of bloody murder in the human soul.
In some of us it never comes out, even in murderous circumstances, and in others the setting ignites the gleam in the eye.
We are not through with that gleam yet. Read the news today, and prove it to yourself. Pray for peace.
Dear Pavel,
Your post reminds me of something from the memoirs of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran. Sheeran served 411 of combat duty in Italy, Austria, and southern Germany during World War II. After his return to Philadelphia, Sheeran became involved in labor racketeering for organized crime. After Sheeran described his first murder for the Mafia to his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran was asked whether his conscience bothered him. Sheeran was, after all, a man from a devoutly Catholic background. Sheeran responded by referring to his experiences in World War II. He explained that it bothered him no more than, “When an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to ‘hurry back,’ you did what you had to do.”