Let
me begin with a poem by the war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. The poem is called Attack
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and
dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb, to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
Siegfried
Sassoon was one of the wars most savage critics and as he was the
perfect gentleman officer and his status as a hero made his condemnation
of the war all the more powerful. In this poem, he communicates well the
fear and terror that was the daily experience of the men in the trenches of
Flanders – it’s far removed from the glorifying images of war that those at
home consumed.
Those
images were more like Rupert Brooke’s poem the soldier, that begins
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a
foreign field
That is for ever England.
Where Robert Brook glories in the sacrifice that makes England great and free, Sassoon depicts the ‘grey, muttering faces, masked with fear’. And he ends with that desperate cry “Jesus, make it stop”.
All
week the images that have been fed to us from the front line has been of bombs
and guns and shovels and battle-gear. But the images we’ve seen have been of
satellite images of military targets, the surgical strikes of precision
weapons, and all the modern machinery of war. But the reality is different from
the glory of an heroic deed. Soldiers are killed in accidents, by other tense
and tired soldiers. Civilians are hit in the market squares, or targeted by
their own soldiers for fleeing. If we ever thought this would be a short sharp
shock - now we know that it may well long and be drawn out, as more troops are
hurried in. And if still we think of our was as liberating, we can only be
disappointed to see that the Iraqi people have not come out in mass numbers to
welcome our troops. Rather, the troops hear of other parts of Europe condemning
our actions.
So the horror of war, the waste of
life and ambiguity of purpose is all apparent again. We are confronted by the
horror of death each day. Our news reports are edited of images of ‘furtive eyes’
and ‘faces masked with fear’, but think of them spending restless nights under
fire, struggling against the sandstorms, and digging trenches for shelter. They
fear gas once again but also biological weapons too. This is the all to
familiar reality of war. “O Jesus, make it stop!”
The
deaths of young people that are sent into battle and of civilians caught up in
war ask us very different questions than, say, the death of an elderly person.
When we think of those whose lives had been generally happy and lived well, but
whose mind and body had been fading over time, we can reflect that death can
seem to be a release from the struggles of living. Families and friends can
find consolation in that understanding and celebrate their loved one’s life in
its completion, while also finding an ongoing sense of their late beloved
continuing influence on them.
The
meaning of a piece of music is not to be found its ending, but in the whole,
which resonates in those who have heard it long after the final drawn out chords
bring the piece to its resolution. So the meaning of a life may then be
understood only after that final silence is reached, after which applause may
well be due. But for those who face death, or the relatives of a child or young
adult abruptly - killed mid-song (as it were) - death raises very different and
pressing questions. ‘Why?’ ‘Why my son?’ ‘What for?’
What
we can demand is that their lives are not spent in vain. After of a road crash
on a dangerous corner, action is taken to prevent another. In this way new hope
can arise out of death. But after genocide, after war, what action needs to be
taken by the world community? What can be learned?
We
should learn that oppressed countries find themselves been led by dictators, it
was so with Germany after the Versailles Treatise before their invasion of
Austria and Poland, it was so with Argentina before the invasion of Argentina,
but after Iraq was removed from Kuwait, we loaded on them economic sanctions.
We did not learn – but we must.
In
the future, we need to ask, are there other ways of deposing of tyrants other
than by sanctions that kill their people, or engaging with their armies and
killing soldiers? Should the UN abandon the idea of the inviolability of the
boarders of a nation state, when that state kills its people? Can we not find a
way of establishing a clear and permanent solution to the Palestinian plight,
which is the cause of so much anti-western hatred and terrorism, and to which
an aggressive response has been such an insufficient answer. And should the
rules of international trade not be changed to overcome the resentments against
the exploitation of the poor by western markets?
Such
questions as these are as contentious as war itself, but they need to be asked
– need to be faced and resolved – if the blood of the soldiers is not to be
spent in vain. And of course we feel as powerless before them as we do before
the march to war - so we too cry out against the violence of global injustices,
‘Jesus, Let it stop!’
Yet
the Jewish Christian and Muslim traditions offer a social vision first spoken
by those early prophets. It is one that can rise again from the wastelands of
war – an idea of nations living in justice and peace. We see hope of
reconciliation even after the death’s of so many, by forgiveness and love. But
it will take sacrifice of our nation – not in terms of war, but in terms of the
economic advantages we have enjoyed in our country since the industrial
revolution. But that is the price for peace, and a small price to pay, when set
against the lives of other people.
It
is that vision we must return to, and hold before us. That dream, that one-day
all nations may stand shoulder to shoulder and be ‘free at last’.
But
it is because our faith holds that the whole world is a community, that the
loss of any human being, whatever their faith or nationality, is our loss and
pain. I pray that they may not have died in vain! ‘Jesus, let it stop.’