Martyrdom 3: Esprit de Corps

Posted on March 1, 2004 in Martyrdom Series Morals & Ethics Myths & Mysticism War

All war gods are death gods. Even Kuan Ti — “a massive man, nine feet in height, with a beard two feet long, a ruddy complexion, and eyebrows like sleeping silkworms shading his phoenix eyes, which were scarlet red” according to Arthur Cotterel — the preventer of wars had a physique and a mailed fist quite capable of dispatching the rebels sorcerers, demons, and foreigners who stood against him into Confucian hell.

War gods seldom appear inhuman: Ares is a virile young man, well-proportioned and strong, wearing a breastplate, helm, and shield — standard equipment for the enemy. The Greek divinities meddled in the Trojan War and Athena sported a suit similar to that of Ares. Norse male gods nearly all wore mail and conical helms. If Aztec deities such as Huitzilopochtli resemble clunky robots similar to the Transformers toys enjoyed by Generation X, we must remember that it is because these depictions must carry all the attributes assigned to them by the priestly class. Inside the modular architecture lurks a god with a human face and limbs.

The gods of slaughter exist, I think, to charge our spirit with the feeling that the strength of their arm will be in our arm when we enter battle. Should we die, they promise us a beauteous and pleasureable existence beyond the exhaustion, the muscle aches, the stone bruises picked up on the march, and the pain from scourges, lacerations, burns , and shatters that cover the body of the wounded man.
Houris, angels, and — if you happen to be slapping down mead while waiting for the celestial draft in Valhalla — serving wenches cater to our every need. If we die for the Aztec cause, we return to earth as a hummingbird where we can hover, spin about, whirr, and dart more deftly than that heavy Wagnerian hades engine that it inspired, the helicopter.

Modern battle has crooked, hard edges, much uglier than the swords and shining armor of the centurions and knights who made the poor bastards on the other side die for their country. It hasn’t been pretty for a long time and men don’t like the idea of leaving the gratifications of their homes for terrors in strange lands. When an enemy invades, it is easy to raise an army. But when you, the general with dreams of conquest, wants to recruit for a foreign adventure, you must entice, you must seduce. You must invite goddesses — Astarte, Freya, Athena (Minerva), Columbia, and Joan of Arc — to get men to leave their mark, sign on the dotted line, agree to be part of the slaughter. Glory can play a part. Be like the knights of simpler days, is the message of a Canadian poster: Your motor cycle is your steed. If you show the enemy, show him as arrogant, inhuman, or as one of the living dead as a German recruitment poster circulated in Denmark depicts a Russian soldier. Or else you can use guilt to sway them: in a World War I British recruiting poster, John Bull stands before a line of men standing at attention. A French village burns behind them. “Who’s Absent?” he grunts, pointing at the viewer. “Is it You?”

When all else fails, nothing is so numinous as stand-ins for familiar faces: mothers, sisters, or the girl next door wearing the robes of Victory, her auburn hair flowing in auburn curls can wear any but the most hardened pacifist into submission. Hestia tending the home fires can be powerful if she is on your side.

Even Christ, the Prince of Peace, gives his blessing when we go to fight the enemies of Mohammed.

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The state religion used to draw men into carnage is not the same as the one that sustains them amidst it.

Soldiers cling to crosses and other superstitions in the field. As a member of a killing unit, the warrior’s job is to be sure that “the other son of a bitch dies for his country.” Generals such as Patton like to think that they are the high priests of vast congregations called “armies”, but from what I have heard and read from grunts the spiritual community is more akin to that of Quakers than to the Vatican or Shinto. Cut off from the main force, the man in the trenches may say a Lord’s Prayer or praise the King of the Universe, but his temple is the foxhole — more of a household shrine — and the god to which he must answer is called “My Buddy Over There”.

Soldiers don’t fight for causes: they fight for the fellow next to them. Christianity may ease their mind regarding the afterlife; the meat grinder makes them worry more about what the guy behind them thinks about them. It’s not for the nation, not for Christ, not for the Cause that the warrior fights for. Just the guys next to him.

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My father never talked about the war much. I learned afterwards that he was one of three survivors of his company at the Battle of San Pietro. All he ever told my mother about it was “that damn hill” that they charged up. And for the rest of his life, he maintained a special affection for Texans — who had composed most of the unit. They were his personal kitchen gods, the guardian of any household. He owed his life to them and he felt their absence.

Think of it: of all those friends he made during basic training, of all those men who went with him to the field, only two others survived. Dad often talked of having missed Anzio by twenty one days. What happened to the other two men, presumably friends? Did they get sent home? Did they die of their wounds? Or were they sent on to Anzio to die there in Mark Clark’s bungled attempt to establish a beachhead on Italy’s Tyrrhenian Coast?

There’s a lot of silence in Catholicism and Dad mostly kept his silence about the war. I think he went searching for men of the same generation as his friends on business trips to Texas. He — a Utah boy and a transplant to Southern California — cheered for the Dallas Cowboys, which was heretical. I received a few postcards from him, showing pretty Texas girls dressed up as rhinestone cowboys. When he died at age 55 of a heart attack, he may have been the last of his company. Eisenhower had driven them hard, denying them winter clothing in an experiment to see just how far troops would go under foot freezing conditions before they mutinied. Dad marched as far as his feet would carry him. My mother told me about the time when he and a buddy set up their tent in what appeared to be a comfortably level spot. When the sargent spotted them in the morning, he cried out: don’t move! You’re in a minefield! Let me get the map!”

Dad survived the minefield, the freezing rains, and San Pietro. Out of his fortuitous endurance came my brother and I. I heard only the scantiest rumors and intimations of what he went through; I do not doubt that until the day he died there existed in his head a shrine to all his friends who died trying to slog up that mountainside in the Liri Valley. Arrayed like saints in niches around the calcium chapel of his skull, they watched over him as he worked in the aerospace industry and raised a family.

The word “martyr” comes from the Greek, meaning “witness”. It’s related to the Latin word “memoria” meaning “memory.”

Tomorrow: War, continued.