War stories

For some reason, I missed out on both previous times when Band of Brothers was shown on Finnish television. Fortunately, they recently did a second rerun and I finally managed to record the whole series. I've been watching it these last few weeks at a leisurely pace, admiring the top-class writing, acting and direction. It certainly deserves all the recognition and awards that were rained on it when it premiered in 2001 (- it's been nine &#¤ing years?! Tempus does indeed fugit, it seems....)

Totally by coincidence, I've simultaneously been reading The Civil War, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns' book version of their PBS documentary series, so I've spent an undue amount of time on two bloody frontlines, in two time periods, with ordinary American soldiers in the center of the picture.

It must be said that I have enjoyed both the series and the book immensely. Being a totally non-violent person, the graphic depictions of what the realities of war mean to individual humans, hold a certain mystery and dark charm for me. It's a world  I probably could not endure for a minute before cracking (or who knows - sometimes we become different people in extreme situations), and certainly one I wish to avoid as completely as possible.

But I am not immune to the bravery, personal loss, honest sacrifice and whatever human experiences and qualities come into sharp focus in a time of war. There is no underestimating the endless repercussions and formative effects war casts on a society for generations, and that's why it is necessary to try, even if incompletely, to understand it. Books and cinematic representations cannot be the real thing, but perhaps they can articulate something essential about the experience.

Two things strike me about both Band of Brothers and The Civil War: the almost complete absence of women and the fact that the soldiers getting blown apart, shot in the brain and crushed under tanks didn't seem to have much of an idea why they were being butchered.

That war has been and is mainly a male business is kind of obvious, but somehow I feel women would be much more active and visible in a major conflict today - at least in the Western world. The total exclusion of women from the war theatre even in WWII - not to mention the American civil war - is striking. World has changed; if it hadn't, I probably wouldn't notice a thing like this.

In The Civil War, an Union officer asks a Confederate soldier why he's fighting. "Because you are here", is the only reply he can give. In Band of Brothers, Hitler is mentioned the first time in episode 7/10, and even then only in a humourous aside. The E Company never talks the meaning of this war, everything is about clearing the next objective.

I'm not saying these individual works of dramatised reality and non-fiction lay bare some inner truth of warfare. But I do believe wars usually arise out of complicated political and ideological conflicts and dead ends that a layman has little or know precise understanding of. Consequently, wars are fought and body counts increased by men whose main reason for killing and getting killed is "because you're here" - and sometimes not even that. In most cases, it's not the soldier whose goals fighting is meant to achieve. Those who gain from the slaughter are never seen on a battlefield.