Posted by
celtic-dragon on Monday, November 26, 2007 8:53:08 AM
It's been awhile since I have have checked in, and much has happened. My apologies to all for the delay, but I have been working in Indianapolis at the airport. I expect that the job may last for at least little longer, so posting may be sporadic.
In the late evenings after I get into my hotel room, I find there is little to do but watch the limited cable fare that is offered. "Red Eye", on Fox News, has become a standard. However, the local PBS station, WFYI, has been airing Ken Burns' "The War" on late night viewing. As most of you know, "The War" is a documentary detaining the effect of World War II on four very ordinary mid size United States cities and towns. As in his previous and outstanding "The Civil War", Burns makes extensive use of letters and eyewitness testimonies, but here the testimony is largely live and on camera. Much of the footage is new (to U.S. audiences) and much is also in color.
The color footage really caught my eye one evening last week as I watched the final episode taking the narrative up to VE and VJ day. The footage was of B-29 bombers over Japan. Like many in the aviation industry, I have been a rabid admirer of the B-29 (and many other warbirds as well...). The B-29 is a miracle of 1940's technology, and the footage showed a flight of the giant aircraft gracefully navigating a beautiful cobalt sky.
There was something else about that final episode. One of the veterans that had been featured throughout the series was a P-51 fighter pilot who had served in the European theatre. He had told of one day when he strafed a column of German trucks and pulled in close enough to really see what the .50 calibre bullets he fired were really doing to the men. He had described seeing the horrorfying damage that he had done, and the nightmares and occasional paralysis he has suffered ever since. He has a gentle and almost haunted look about him, as one reviwer noted. Nonetheless, on this night, he admitted to still being pulled into "the whirlpool", as he called it. Despite the anguish, terror and loathing of combat that he remembers, it still draws him back with the promise of the sheer intensity of the experience.
I understood, or least on some level. One of the most memorable, and indeed most intense experiences of my time in the Army was when I fired a .50 calibre machine gun. We called it an M2, or a "Ma Deuce". The muzzle blast was absolutely unbelievable when you were in the assistant gunner position. It would half knock your helmet off and beat you senseless. When I actually got to shoot, I can remember the sun on my arms and the heat on my BDU pants as I gripped the spade handles. The sweat and dirt on my hands had formed to make a muddy paste the collected in the folds of my hands, and I could feel the slickness as I toggled the butterfly trigger and the gun began to roar. There is nothing like it for really feeling alive.
All of this got me wondering about the strange fascination that I and so many other people have with the machines and minutiae of death. A scholar that I have admired for some time blogs as "Rob" over at "Lawyers, Guns and Money". He is a confirmed liberal on most any social, economic or other question. He would seem to have little reason to be interested in the military, but he blogs quite regularly about naval history (his series on battleships is outstanding) as well as any tidbit concerning interesting military technology that catches his eye. Several months ago, he ran a story about an interesting Russian AFV (an armoured fighting vehicle) with some truly impressive footage of said vehicle shooting off ATGM's (that is, anti tank guided missiles). His final sentence was "God, I miss the Soviet Empire..."
I understood. Robb wasn't saying he missed Stalinism, or Gulags like Kolya, or the any of the myriad miseries of communism. He missed an adversary that built such amazing STUFF. Y'know...like kewl looking tanks that shoot missiles that can flip up in the air and attack another tank from right overhead. It's the same reason I obsess over old Soviet tanks and aircraft...and why my heart beats a little faster when I see exciting new aircraft coming out of the Sukoi plants, or I hear a rumor that Mikoyan-Gurevitch is building something new. Of course, I don't think too hard about the application end of that exciting hardware. No doubt, that P-51 pilot was thinking quite a bit as his hand to curled up into a knot as he flew back to his base in England that fateful day.
Back to those B-29's. As I said, they were graceful and utterly awe-inspiring. Of course, the bombs began to drop. They fell in the hundreds, fluttering in the slipstream and looking no more harmful than a hand full of children's baubles. The camera panned down to focus on a coastal city. Silently, the orange blossoms of death began to appear. The effect was surreal, as the white, concentric shock waves and giant gouts of flame collected together to form a hideous, obscene new landscape under an innocuous and even beautiful array of color, seen from such a distance. I was dimly aware that my hand was over my mouth and I was openly weeping. I could only keep repeating "OmyGod OmyGod OmyGod" as the tears ran between my fingers and fell to my lap. I didn't know what else to say. I was watching a city die. The airplanes I loved were killing it.
I know the awful mathematics of industrialized warfare. I have studied them for over thirty years. I know the history of hate and atrocities committed by Japan. I know every reason we had to carpet the cities with HE, magnesium and napalm. In that instant, they still rang false, as I grieved for men, women and children I had never known, and never could know. Still, I didn't know what to think about my own fascination with such a seeming macabre aspect of war: that being the very implements we use to wage it. After all, we are never half so clever as when we devise a new interesting way to kill one another.
I'm not going off to join "Swords to Plowshares" any time soon. Like it or not, war is a natural human state, and will be with us as long as we are around. I'm not going to stop admiring aircraft, or rushing to check details on a new AFV. I'm not going to forget that unnamed city, though. We can't separate ourselves entirely form the horror of wars...even absolutely just and necessary wars...that are waged in our name and on our behalf. Those people in Japan had names, and lives, and loved...then bled and died. They deserved better, even if there was no other way.