Tomorrow the Unknown Warrior is going to be interred in the National War Memorial. The United Kingdom did this not long after WWII, and the whole country virtually came to a standstill. The grief was intense, because the body being placed in Westminster Cathedral could have been any person. And so he (perhaps even she) became every person. It became a focus for every one's grief, because at that time every one knew someone who had died. Perhaps not in person, because perhaps you had never met Uncle John or Aunty Mary who died in the war, but you had people missing in your family photographs.
Because we have left this ceremony so long, fewer of us have had such a personal Cfrontation with the sacrifice of war. So perhaps tomorrow will not bring this country to a standstill in the same way the UK was still. And silent.
We have an uncomfortable relationship with our soldiers at times. They are the people who are sent on our behalf to battlefields. Often now they go as peacekeepers. We are often personally committed to the ideals of peace, but we don't respect the people that go and die for our ideals. Soldiers are described as cannon fodder, as dumb grunts. Soldiers are in a difficult position. If they think of the other side as people they cannot defend themselves or attack, who could shoot their brother? Or someone else's child, especially when you are a parent? But if they aren't prepared to shoot, their own children may not have a parent. Soldiers have to dehumanise the enemy. When the people you meet are not human, how much easier is it to rape and pillage? And what soldier gets to choose their battles? In the case of Hitler it was relatively easy to feel as if you were fighting on the side of the righteous, but what about Vietnam? Soldiers get sent to battles, they don't get to vote as to whether they individually want to go. Signing up for military duty requires you give up your independent decision making on who to fight.
Here in NZ, we have a democracy. We have religious freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and many many rights. Soldiers died to give us these chances and opportunities. The Unknow Warrior is the symbol of all the soldiers and civilians who have died so we can be the country we are. If you have the chance, show your gratitude tomorrow. Attend the parade, and thank the soldiers we can.
Posted by Toni at November 10, 2004 12:05 PMI guess too there is the conflict between the fact that the individual solidier totally sacrifices all personal freedoms, sometimes agaist their will entirely, and usually with some degree of coercion. Even soldiers keen to sign up often find the battlefield reality so hard to deal with - i.e. no-one individually wants to be there, but overall the country wants them to be. So the soldiers have to bend their will to the army discipline or else everyone with half a brain would run away from being shot at.
So to preserve democracy, we of necessity require our soldiers to submit to an (is it an autocracy?) - I'm not sure of the word, but what I mean is, the soldiers in defence of democracy have absolutely no say over their lives within the army, it's all decided for them from above. And they are somewhat undemocratically ranked and the lower your rank the more likely you are to be killed.
It's almost like a kind of super-organism, like an ant, to relieve individual responsibility for emotionally abhorrent acts. Each soldier as a human individual would, as you say, revolt from shooting a stranger or napalming a village. But as a member of a unit, acting as a cell recieving orders down a chain of command from the brain - that's different. That's doing a job, obeying orders, functioning as a team.
It kind of disperses direct guilt and responsibility, I guess. Without it, wars like the ones we currently have would be pretty much impossible.