WWI

On the drive into work this morning I heard an interview with one of only 9 remaining veterans of WWI still alive in the UK.

WWI ended in 1918, and was billed at the time as the “Great War” or “War to end all Wars”….sadly it was anything but. It heralded in a new era of efficient killing….
Killing on a new scale.
The war killed between 10 and 13 million people, about one-third of them civilians. For every soldier who died, two or three suffered wounds. Millions were disabled for life. The following are estimates of the military fatalities of major combatants. (Source: firstworldwar.com)
Russia
1,700,000

Germany
1,600,000

France
1,359,000

Austria-Hungary
922,000

Italy
689,000

Britain
658,700

Romania
335,706

Turkey
250,000

Bulgaria
87,500

United States
58,480

Australia
58,150

Canada
56,500

When I first moved to the UK, I remember being surprised at the number of memorials erected to the dead of the 1st World War. Apart from the striking monuments in London, every village, and town (Cambridge being no exception) had its own memorial, where, inscribed in stone are the names of local men who died in France. Most of the train stations in London have a wall with similar inscriptions, honouring members of the railroad fraternity who served.
No one looks at them anymore, except maybe tourists.

There was hardly a person in the UK untouched in some way due to the loss of a father, brother or son. There are social historians, who credit the horror and waste of the great battles for being the beginning of the end of the rigid class system in place at the time. The establishment had lost all credibility, and it was clear to all ,that the bullet or the bomb did not discriminate due to breeding or background.
WWI was a national trauma for the countries who fought in it.
Who thinks of it now?

Growing up in Ottawa, I remember looking at the War Memorial downtown and being really impressed with the realism of the statues….it was a “look forward to sight”…..that was when I was very young. As time went on, I hardly gave it a second glance. The events it represented had no meaning to me.
Like most of the memorials, in the UK, the one in Ottawa has been “modified”, with WWII and Korea, added as time marched on.

An event less than 100 years ago, which so shocked the world as a result of the carnage and pointless waste of life, with people still alive, who either went through it as combatants, or civilians…..has almost no place in our collective consciousness today.
People are still interested….just Google WWI and see how many hits you get….but its more of a fascinated, academic interest, or the focus of the military obsessed, or statistics bores, who if it wasn’t WWI, would be endlessly poring over model train set manuals.
WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Arab- Israeli wars, the Falklands war, Persian Gulf 1 &2, countless African clashes, have overloaded our brains to the point where we’ve become immune to what the reality of war is.
Yes, the mother, father, brother and sister, still grieve when their son or daughter is killed or maimed…… I mean immune collectively, as a society. Think of the present situation. It doesn’t really mean much to the average person other than; “ Iraq…Christ, what a mess!”.
It feels remote.
The people in our "professional" armies tend to be from the economically disadvantaged strata of our societies…… Not many law or biology graduates rush down to the recruiting station when they get their degrees. Armies are pretty much full of canon fodder. We’ve come full circle…back to the same situation as 1914.
One difference today is the addition of the “citizen soldier” in the mix (Territorial Army in the UK or National Guard in the US) and this puts a bit of pressure towards ending a conflict, but not enough to provide the sort of political muscle necessary to bring about a speedy end.
I’m pretty amazed at how easily we slide into these situations. In the west we tend to sneer at the mass demos full of outrage and indignation that play out on our TVs from places like Iran. We tend to be more clinical. With subtle propoganda of our own, we make a few speeches and, token gestures to the UN, then send in the planes, followed closely by the troops once we’ve dropped untold tonnage of high explosives on the population that’s annoyed our politicians……If you think I’m exaggerating…think of the sound and light show of Operation Rolling Thunder….
I'm not saying war is always wrong, or we're just cogs in some sort of manipulated machine....I just think we've forgotten the horror of what we seem so quick to unleash...we rush headlong into the abyss.
You’d think that the media would play their part in exposing this…..that’s certainly the way they see themselves. Am I alone in the sneaking suspicion that the media just LOVE armed conflict? Think of the career possibilities…the celebrity potential…the chance to witness the carnage first hand and yet be untainted by actually doing any of the killing…..some are cheerleaders, playing the rugged hack…posing on the tank as it shoots across the desert…..a “c list” celeb, who will return to their Manhattan or Notting hill apt to bang out a book chronicling their adventures….(better be quick cause all the network guys are doing the same)……..its not a war….its a VEHICLE for bigger and better things….

This brings me back to the interview I heard on the radio this morning. When asked if he supported a State Funeral for the last WWI veteran to die, the old boy paused and said “I don’t care. If it was me I won’t be around to witness it. It’s not as if anyone paid any attention up to now except on the 11th of November…..”
Maybe he still remembers the horrors of the trenches in 1916, and has no interest in becoming a recruiting poster.


Terry