Text: "It's been noted that soldiers in premodern eras sometimes went unnamed. A man was more efficient, so it was thought, it he was simply known as soldier - one of many. But modern soldiers have names. Although the men of Easy Company functioned as a group during the war, all were individuals. They grew up in various places all over America. They had brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers."
This is quote is from the beginning chapter of a book filled with the life stories of men who who were paratroopers during World War II, their life stories largely defined by the years they spent at War. This quote really hit me hard while reading this book because today in society I believe that many in America have gone back to premodern times, in that, most of us know soldiers as soldiers but not as individuals... and when we hear that news brief we don't always realize that the soldier they are talking about on the television is a brother, a son, a friend, or maybe even a father.
This can be evaluated by Aristotle when he says (pg5) "But when a tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to each other.... these are the situations that can be looked for by a poet." This makes me realize that many people distance themselves from the life and death of a soldier because they are not like family or near or dear - so to them no tragedy has occurred. Another quote from Aristotle that relates to this passage is from page 4 "...for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves." This relates because a soldiers death is in fact an unmerited misfortune -and pity - not tragedy- a result to many.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
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Kaitlin raises a very interesting aspect of being a soldier in her posting: individuality, or self-conceptualization. I served as a soldier overseas, many years ago. I grew up with a father who was a Marine and thus I was fairly well prepared for what awaited me in my first days of boot camp, thanks to his anecdotes over dinner, in the weeks leading up to my departure for boot camp.
ReplyDeleteNothing could have prepared me, however, for the absolute and quite literal stripping away of the self that occurred during the first thirty days of basic training. I agree with Kaitlin wholeheartedly that we, as civilians, lack a proper respect for the individuality of each soldier who fights, dies, or is injured - and not just in war time; but the absolute fact that the military not only discourages, but forbids individuality, I believe, helps the public forget the very same thing that the soldier forgets.
Consider a few very obvious but overlooked facts about the inductee's first days in the military: all of our clothes are taken from us and we are all issued identical clothing; our hair is immediately stripped from us and we are left just slightly north or bald; we are issued identical boots, hats, ponchos, etc.; we are all generally the same age and, therefore, share the facial features of youth (minimal facial hair, full lips, scared eyes); our names, en masse, become Private - not Private Kellison, just Private; within three days our voices are no longer the same - we are all so hoarse from screaming "YES DRILL SERGEANT!" that our own mothers do not recognize our voices on the telephone (this happened to me); we are not allowed to listen to radios (no individual music choices); we are not allowed ANY contact with the outside world at all for the first month; we are up at 0430 running and yelling and lifting and yelling and doing pushups and yelling and firing identical M-16s, and yelling.
My personal experience and subsequent learning has taught me that the sleep deprivation and stripping away of individuality is an absolute necessity to forming a military that is filled with units (not people or individuals), units who are willing to move straight in to the line of fire, into a certain death, a death which might save other units, but nonetheless will kill some individuals. Kaitlin is right to perceive the lack of the public's sense of individuality, but I think that this might be, at least in part, because we soldiers chose a life that was free of individuality, the life we chose, by definition and by training had to be free of the self to make the lives of the units around us safer.