A conversation with Mr. Atkins

There were trains at the station, weren’t there; flags and bands, to properly wild the civil breasts of fiancées and wives, mothers and fathers, who saw you off. 

And we soldiers -- don’t forget the soldiers -- affianced to what we believed in -- flags, fiancées, wives, mothers and fathers. The old home hearth burned with no less heat than that which was in our hearts.

Patriotism.

And the grand adventure. And you?

There were no trains, no platforms, no flags or bands. We went alone, successively, one after the other, from bus stations and airports. The others -- mothers and fathers, fiancées perhaps, a few wives -- performed dutifully at bus stations and airports, as did we. Our leaders saw no need for flags and bands to send us off. Our leaders knew the words to catechize our hearts, and the hearts of those who saw us off. Our hearts were easily wilded. Flags waved and bands played in hearts and minds of our leaders. Why not the same in ours?

You went so easily, then?

As did you. Even after the grand adventure was no more, after the monstrous anger began, even after the casualty lists appeared, patriotically, in newspapers or on pillar or post, still you went.

In the beginning ...

In the beginning, it was without form. There was proper form, of course. You go because it is your duty, or because it is expected of you. That is proper form. In the beginning, the void was not yet filled with the stutter of machine guns; the rattle of musketry, as poets put it, although the stutter was far more deadly than the rattle. In the beginning, there was no knowledge of the Spandau, no belief in the power of Krupp. Clouds of yellow-green mustard gas were beyond anyone’s imagination.    

It has always been that way, proper form. The French at Agincourt, charging, Harry’s archers drawing strings and their harps sing at the plucking.

Death from the sky. The same as here. Westmoreland said they should have more men. Harry disagreed and gave your history that bloody band of brothers.

Yours as well, I should think.

Yes, ours as well. We read Harry’s grand speech, we knew of St. Crispin’s day. We read of Saratoga, White Plains, Yorktown, Waterloo, Sebastopol, Cawnpore, Shiloh, Gettysburg. Men marching into all that. Lines and lines of men. Red jackets and blue jackets and white jackets, khaki and gray, olive brown and green. Floods and floods of men whose uniforms, mixed together, would make a rainbow of colors.

The uniforms were mixed together, are mixed together, in a recipe of omelets, burned and broken. It has always been that way. Cain picked up a stone or ground sharp a stick, or throttled brother Abel.

David slew his hundred Philistines and took their foreskins for the hand of the king’s daughter.

After they were dead, I should hope. For the Philistines’ sake.

It was an act of patriotism. Saul said, and David did.

It has always been that way.