‘Nobody wins in a war’

At a lunch the other day, I found myself sitting opposite a former Special Air Service (SAS) soldier, now in his late 70s, who was recounting his sheer terror in doing his first Halo (high altitude, low opening) night parachute drop.

Without protective clothing at the 30 000-foot drop height, you would have just nine seconds before you froze to death, that’s how hostile the high altitudes are.

He couldn’t make out earth from the heavens as he fell and it felt like just seconds after he opened his ‘chute.

He eventually made it to the RV (rendezvous point) and waited for hours… but his buddy, Rodney, never showed up. “Never found out what happened to him,” he added matter-of-factly.

He stared into the middle distance and then said: “It’s all rubbish! War! They tell you it’s the right thing to do. But people die! Nobody wins a war!”

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He was from a generation, like mine, which had been brought up on the ideals of duty and honour. From our fathers and grandfathers, we relived World War I and World War ll.

We played soldiers with sticks for guns and bravely overcame our “wounds” to kill the enemy.

It was in high school, however, where some of the doubts started creeping in, as we studied the classic work by WW1 war poet Wilfred Owen, Dulce et decorum est (It is sweet and fitting… to die for one’s country).

After describing the agonising horrors of men choking to death in a poison gas attack Owen concludes:

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

“To children ardent for some desperate glory,

“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

“Pro patria mori”

Later we went off to war, not questioning, seeing it as a louder extension of our earlier childhood games. It wasn’t.

Some of us didn’t come back. And those of us who did would never be the same innocents they once were.

This week, with the resurgent right-wing Trump victory behind us and Memorial Day (11 November) ahead of us, I was torn.

I despise the wannabe gun-toting heroes in America who believe everything can be solved with a single (or multiple) trigger pull.

Part of Making America Great Again would, I assume, being prepared to lay down your life – in a “sweeting and fitting” way, of course – for the Fatherland… because Trump’s America would never be a Motherland.

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In practice, after WWll, when US GIs laid down their lives to help rid the world of the very real threat of fascism, most American boys (and girls) who have bled on foreign shores did so in pursuit of Uncle Sam’s toxic brand of capitalist imperialism.

Yet, there is no doubt that, beyond the politics and the lies which propel any war, individual soldiers performed great acts of selfless heroism – sometimes with a purpose and sometimes pointlessly.

Being prepared to lay down your life for that of another human – whether in war or in peace – is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of the human spirit and what genuinely makes us great… beyond that hackneyed political slogan.

As you get older, your awareness of your frailty increases and so does your gratefulness that you have survived – no matter how decrepit – to see the thousands of sunrises that those in the graveyards would not. It will be fitting and seemly to remember them so their sacrifice does not go unnoticed.