Peeking into the rock

I finally found almost exactly what I need: a memoir of an Austrian soldier on the Eastern front in World War One.  Better would have been a Russian soldier, but this fellow's memories are completely apposite.  He talks about the actual daily work of a soldier in rapidly-moving trench warfare (unlike the Western front where nobody could budge for ages and the trenches were much better equipped anyway). Unlike war buff sites, which have been somewhat helpful when they have archives of photographs but the narrative is often at the war-game level. Honestly, I don't care which division went where unless you tell me what they did when they had to travel through twenty miles of forest, or how they got across the wetlands or that valley with all the creeks in it -- usually they don't even tell you what the landscape was like at all, so it really is like a board game. They think they're telling me about the "human" side of the war when they relay some hoary story about somebody's brave quips. Which, of course, I've already heard, thank you.

I'm relieved to find that I extrapolated pretty well on the information I already had. I only came across a few things that have story-altering implications. I think I have underemphasized some things, and maybe overemphasized some others, but I'll judge that in revision. Right now I'm resisting the rapid deployment of some Cool Bits that I may include in the revision after I have thought them over wth a cooler head, or I may leave by the wayside. 

One thing I'm struck by is that this guy in no way demonizes the Russians. He's proud of the fact that while the Austrians he saw were patriotic and devoted to winning the war, they were not, in his words "jingoistic." I don't know if this is the last shreds of chjivalry persisting into the 20th century, or a bit of precocious post-nationalism, or just a different kind of war fever altogether. It seems to me that in the US today, the people who support the war are the other way around. They don't seem to really love their own country, or their own people (they do use some patriotic, country-loving language, but mostly they seem to despise most of the people in it and a large number of the institutions that are supposed to define it, and they certainly don't seem to have any great desire to preserve the land itself), but they believe the most hideous things about the people on the other side of the war. I think it's telling that ever since the (first? definitely the second) Bush presidency, we've been seeing a lot of use of the term "the bad guys" instead of the names of the people on the other side, or even "the enemy." And "the bad guys" is not being used ironically by these people.  Now, I don't for a minute believe that my Austrian soldier speaks for all of Austria in World War One, and I can't say, because I've never examined it before, how much of Austria thought like him and how much of the country thought in more jingoistic ways.  So I can't honestly say I have seen a way to contrast the state of my country now with the state of that country then.  I guess I have to say I'm struck by the contrast between this guy in this memoir and some other fellows I have read about in my time and place and leave it at that, and not make generalizations like I just started to do.

Another thing I'm struck by is the terrible, terrible font this memoir is presented in. Why? It's small and muddy and dark and it takes way too much effort to read. I almost gave up. Instead I copied the text into my own word processor, and I'm really glad I did. I'm not generally a font snob -- I mean, I like Comic Sans -- but this was way too nasty and difficult.

Oh, yeah, it's the 30th so I have to account for the month, Really didn't nano, but oh my the research I have done.  I only wish I knew over a year ago that I needed to research this stuff, but at that time I thought "I'll avoid most of the war -- knock out a couple battle scenes, and then get on with the real story." I understand, of course, that that is intolerably naive. I probably actually knew it at the time. I probably thought I was going to skate by with a little bit of skimming things for Cool Bits.

But Cool Bits only decorates a story. To actually drive a story you need to know what you're talking about.

One of the things we did in Hawaii was go to Pearl Harbor. This was not at all what I expected.


Over and over at the Arizona memorial the tour guides stressed that we were at a burial gorund, and that we were to see it that way, and to behave that way. The humanity of the dead was a central concern. The geopolitical explanation of events was as even-handed and objective as I think humanly possible -- which is to say it was much more complete than I would have expected. They made us watch a movie about the attack, and it began with an explanation of the Japanese need for resources and therefore for control of Asia, and the plan of a minority within the army and government (called "extremists" in the movie) to launch the attack. There wasn't much mention of Japanese behavior in China and elsewhere, but there were a couple of (not graphic) clips that implied some of it. Then they talked about the heroism of people saving other people, and they talked about the relationships among the dead and between the dead and the survivors, and ended with a clip of a Japanese government representative taking part in the annual? remembrance ceremony, picking a name and a flower from a basket. The memorial itself is an awkward-looking white cement object floating about the Arizona, whose ends flare upwards -- supposedly to symbolize something, I didn't catch what. The movie was all about reconciliation and forging the peace. We were asked to remember 1100 individuals. They took every effort to make them real and concrete in our minds. The war was an abstraction.

At first I just marveled at how this remembrance could go on and not be jingoistic at all. The farfther I get away from the day, though, the more uneasy I am about this last thing: the memorial is utterly utterly utterly neutral on the subject of war. So there's no glorifying battle, but at the same time no "never again." I don't know, maybe that's the only honest approach for a military base to take to a military memorial.

I took pictures of band boys in front of the big guns and I had to listen to them prattle about ordinance, but what actually interested me about the battleship Missouri (which is where the band played) was the immensity of the turrets, and the vast social organization required to operate one. Ninety-some people were employed in shooting one shot. What I wonder about is what it was like to work inside that thing, during battles and between too.