“Don’t talk to me about the atrocities in war; all war is an atrocity”

Whilst I certainly do not profess to be an expert on the topic of war, it is a subject which absorbed six months of my life whilst in my final year at university. The full title of my dissertation was ‘“Don’t talk to me about the atrocities in war; all war is an atrocity“: An examination of the literary representations of war and national identity, from the roots of civilisation to the war on terror.’ I thought it would be a suitable place to start my blogging ‘career’ on the topic of literature, given that I handed my dissertation in some four months ago, and that it would be perfect for me to return to the nostalgia of being an undergraduate student.

Whilst still in my teenage years, I was heavily involved with the Air Training Corps. Towards the end of my time with the local ‘squadron’, I frequently visited a retired officer who was commissioned into the corps after serving as a Warrant Officer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He was suffering with dementia and in his state of forgetfulness, he also returned to the most nostalgic period of his life. “They’ve sent me here to be the squadron adjutant” he would frequently tell me proudly when I visited him many times in the nursing home. For him, the visiting hours were when the “new recruits” came to enlist and the canteen was referred to as “the mess“. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that the woman who brought his food three times a day was in fact the “adjutant“. The burning question in my mind was: how was it that one of the most frightening hours in British history became the epitome of this man’s life? Well, first of all, he was extremely proud of his links with the RAF. He was, after all, flying on the reconnaissance Catalina aircraft that discovered the Bismarck, a find which ultimately led to its destruction. Secondly, he was proud to be British, and the very flag that he served under was draped over his coffin when I served as the coffin bearer party commander after his death. It truly was an emotional experience for all involved, given that Cyril was number three cadet of 148 (Barnsley) Squadron when it was formed in 1938.

Purely from my fascination with Cyril’s experiences, I decided that I was going to research national identity in relation to war in more depth, and literature, as a representation of armed conflict, served as a perfect window for this analysis (and the fact that I was studying a literature degree).

Warfare and armed conflict is certainly a trait that human beings are destined to repeat, over and over again, whether the cause of the war is motivated by a bound moral duty or material wealth. The ancient Greeks, some of the earliest scribes we have access to today, were obsessed with the concept of war; not only is their literature bursting at the seams with the discourse of war, but their national celebrations were based upon its occurrence. The Great Dionysia, a competition comparative only to the modern day Oscars, would see playwrights and actors participating in wonderful performances of Greece’s most celebrated literature. The event was central to their cultural celebrations.

We know from great Homeric works, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey that the actions of the individual were motivated through a term known as “apothesis”, meaning an elevation to a position of dietal equivalence. Of course, figures such as Achilles had little efforts to make, given that his mother, Thetis, was a goddess, and as such, his status is often reflected in his descriptions, his “Mars-like presence, his bright arms, like day, came glittering on like fire-light, or the light of heav’n shot from the rising sun”.

A tradition within later aristocracies is for the powerful to justify their right to status through their genealogical descent from Homeric heroes, and as such, the system creates oligarchy.

The Hellenistic concerns however, were by no means restricted to their gods. Much of the later Homeric works were concerned directly with the polis, the democratic state. This is where the modern term ‘metropolitan’ comes from when referring to a shared industry. There are many works my Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides that stress the importance of the polis. The City Dionysia saw the children of fallen soldiers being paraded on stage wearing hoplite armour, a symbol that self sacrifice would be sponsored by the state.

In a modern society, we are not so different from the ancients in this sense; our soldiers, sailors and airmen are often central to our national celebration, and rightly so. The evolution between the two periods however, has seen the elevation of the individual monarch, such as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, the tyrannical atheist whose lack of moral direction holds no limitations to the atrocities he inflicts, and Shakespeare’s chivalric Henry V, whose spiritual and moral duty to both God and his subjects makes him seem somewhat more human than Tamburlaine. Although it may be claimed by some today that religion is the root of all wars, the comparison of these two serves as a reminder that it can also create compassion and ethical debate in the arena of warfare. On the contrary, it also outlines the inequalities within a monarchical regime, but to Henry’s credit, his crusade is in aid of what he views as a greater good. 

Even today, our service personnel are part of Her Majesty’s armed forces and as such, they still fight for Queen and country. The focus of modern literary texts however, is much more tailored to the soldier and to the individual than to the great military leader. Although Captain Wales’ two tours of Afghanistan were subject to intense media attention, every year we celebrate the fallen by observing a minutes silence. Patrick Hennessey, an ex-serving Captain in the Grenadier Guards who is now a practicing barrister, wrote about his experiences serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan in his books Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Fighting Time and Killing Wars and Kandak: Fighting with Afghans. Both serve as harsh reminders of the immense responsibility that is placed upon the shoulders of our soldiers; being charged with the task of taking another human being’s life. This is something that Hennessey discusses with great sensitivity, yet reading his account, the mental drain that is experienced by the individual is palpable.

Perhaps the reason that Cyril never displayed any sign of such mental drain was that he was never up and close with the enemy, but it was certainly clear that his experiences had a lasting impact on his life. There is no distinction between his experiences and the literary representations of conflicts throughout history; each account only adds to the pool of testimonies of war. It is the very reason hundreds of thousands of people turn out in the blistering cold every November with poppies attached to their breasts to pay tribute to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the name of a greater cause which they may have no understanding of; they are simply pawns in a much wider, complex political interaction.

I like to think that Cyril died happy thinking that he was the adjutant of the nursing home he had previously stayed at. The day before he died I went and visited him in hospital in full uniform (without it, he had no recollection of who I was, the uniform was the only association he could mentally make) and I saluted him as I left the room. These are individuals whose courage cannot be matched and who deserve salutation and the upmost respect.