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By Ed Rogers
The clouds of smoke drift on the winds of battle; the burnt rubber and fuel assault your senses like a monster from a childhood nightmare. The rubble of war machines litter the field...no longer the proud, victorious steeds that carried warriors into battle. Now, the coffins of contention lie silent.
From the craters of dead soil, and destroyed vegetation, creep the invisible vapors of cordite, Comp-B, and gunpowder. Like a spoon, your boots mix the effluvium into your overloaded brain. The mind tries to sort the sights and smells; place them in some kind of order and end the pandemonium. However, there is no beginning or end; no reason to vindicate the destruction. The fine, noble words of the leaders are not present...the wind does not carry the encouragement to march off to war and to give all for God and Country. The wind after the encounter carries only the smell of death.
At the foot of an earthen embankment, men with bodies thrown flat against the soil. They dug their fingers deep into the ground and prayed...but, death found them anyway. The sweet, sickening smell of human flesh and blood now add the spice to the soup. No longer human, the parts of soldiers cover the ooze-soaked field. The eyes stare from a bodiless head, there are no marks on the young face to account for his death. The strap under his chin still holds the steel pot atop his head—you wait for him to speak.
Suddenly, awake, the sweat cold on your body, the smells in your nose are as fresh as the day you walked across that field. Your wife, unaware, sleeps peacefully, as do your kids, in their rooms, down the hall. You walk to the shower and wonder if your son, also, will have to live with the smell, as did your father and grandfather.
Today is Memorial Day, and you will march with your father and others who have crossed the field of battle. Each of you will feel the bond, which the mind has not accepted and the mouth can not voice.
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers
| Please comment |
Ed, thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteEd, one reading of your poem told me I wanted to publish it, but the more times I read it, the better I think it is. Thanks for permitting us to make it available here.
ReplyDeleteEd, what a tremendous piece of writing! Do you have any thoughts about whether the marching and commemoration on Memorial Day do more to make people aware of the horror, and therefore hopefully discourage future battles, or does the pageantry perpetuate the myth of the glory of war and encourage more of it?
ReplyDeleteMotomynd, I'll hazard my own answer to the question. I think that memorials probably do more to perpetuate the myth than to discourage it. Part of the reason for this, I think, is the "sunk cost dilemma." From Wikipedia: "A dilemma of having to choose between continuing a project of uncertain prospects already involving considerable sunk costs, or discontinuing the project. Given this choice between the certain loss of the sunk costs when stopping the project versus possible—even if unlikely—long-term profitability when going on, policy makers tend to favor uncertain success over certain loss.
Delete"As long as the project is neither completed nor stopped, the dilemma will keep presenting itself."
The "war to end all wars" way of thinking, perhaps?
Motomynd, first let me thank you for the kind words. This is my second time to try and answer you---the other one went God only knows where. I'll shorten it this time. Memorial Day is for the citizens of a nation and the soldiers of that nation. I stood on the sidewalk as a child as my father and his friends marched pass and I felt proud. The memories a soldier carries within him have nothing to do with the day, unless one day; all the old soldiers die off and there are no new soldiers to take their place
DeleteMorris, the "sunk cost dilemma" is an intriguing consideration, but I have to wonder if it has any real impact on the thought processes of individual citizens compared to the lust to fulfill the patriotic stereotype, keep up the image of national pride, and blend in with others doing the same. It may impact elected representatives and defense department decision makers, but when it comes to civilians, my guess is they are much easier swayed by emotion than budgetary concerns.
ReplyDeleteKonotahe, again, your post is an amazing piece of writing. Like you, I stood and watched parades when I was young, and I actually planned a career in the military. Then the Vietnam "conflict" came along, and what I saw on TV as I approached high-school graduation quickly overcame the enthusiasm generated in my youth by aging soldiers marching in uniform in front of adoring crowds. That was the point I guess I was driving at: Do parades to honor the warriors of the past do long-term damage to the country by encouraging future soldiers, who may not get to see Vietnam style war coverage and therefore won't have their lust for battle dampened until they are in it?
Your line about waking from a dream with the smell of a long ago battle still in your nose was particularly evocative. When I transitioned from a photojournalism career that all too often documented untimely death and destruction, to a wedding photography business that was all about photographing people at their best and happiest, I was always drawn back to the church sanctuary after the candles were extinguished. Standing there in the quiet, after everyone had left and this happiest of occasions was over, I could smell the smoke from the candles and be vividly reminded of much less happy situations I had documented in the past. Even though I was fairly successful at it and was hired to photograph more than 700 weddings, I never could mentally connect with those happy events at the same level as those that left much less pleasant sights, sounds and scents burned into my senses. Even today I wonder if we wake in the night because they scarred us so badly we can't let them go, or if we recall them so vividly because we still remember the sharp edge we were honed to at that time, and we don't want to let that memory go.
Motomynd,
DeleteI stopped questioning the reasons I felt things, once it dawned on me that those events made me who I am. The good times and the bad times---moved me across the chess board in ways I never would have chosen.
In Memphis Tn there is a street called Jefferson, which becomes a dead-end. There was a three story apartment complex at the end of the street. Vietnamese had taken over the complex. I would drive pass the apartments sometimes and a smell would take me back 50 years. No sight or conversation can return you to a place in time faster than smell.
To see death is one thing but to take photos---that is personal---I'll write you a poem about it, and you can tell me how close I come to getting it right.
You know the show: "Once we were soldiers?" There should be a sub-title: "Once we were young."
Konotahe, my apologies for not following through on this discussion. I have been distracted by a rarity - having two people important to me die of natural causes. And on the same day. People dying of something other than gunfire, bomb blast, plane crash or natural calamity is apparently as odd a concept to my thought processes as accidental death is to most minds.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about the difference between seeing death versus photographing it has me intrigued. Frankly, I've never thought about it, so I will be very interested to read your take on it in a poem.