Week 7 Open Post

I think all of us born in the generation y era as they so call it have grown up with a different perspective on war than most. I know there has been wars going on all around us as we were kids, but it was nothing we really saw in real time. We learned most of our information about war through the "truth" that our history teachers taught us and movies. By truth I mean facts about the war. This brings me back to Hemmingways "A Farewell to Arms" quote when he says, "I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice. . . . We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." When I read this I think back to History class were all those words dissapear and all we were left with were names and dates of places were battle took place, and what the outcome was in the end. The only people remembered were ones that were so called "heros" of a battle or who were high up on the peg board.

I grew up with this huge mis-understanding that wars were just a full on attack and the last man standing was the the winner. Its like a game of chicken, the first one who has any sense of compassion for others over pride is the one who looses. I know there is more to war than that, but it makes sense to me. As I get more into it you find out that war is not all it seems. It is a lot of waiting and messing around until you receive commands from your officer or the other side attacks. I think it is during these times is when most of the war stories come from. I believe that Tim O'Brien says that most war stories are not about war at all. It is during these slow times when people have time enough to think about war and it scares them. When your in war you don't really see anything, you just do as you been trained and time kind of stands still as you get lost in this brutal world of war.