Help Me to Die, O Lord

https://medium.com/century-magazine/help-me-to-die-o-lord-524aa0164b30#.rgwfa71dn

by benbreen • 10 years ago

79 56 10 years ago

gyardley• 10 years ago

As far as I can tell, my great-grandfather's older brother committed suicide with his own infantry rifle rather than go over the top of the trenches again.

The report from the military court of enquiry makes for some sobering reading - the statements of his platoon mates make it sound like he'd already been mentally ill for weeks.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

An incredible essay. That closing poem moved me deeply. What a terrible, terrible time in the history of mankind.

plug• 10 years ago

Indeed. I heard some of the Somme Commemoration on the radio the other day, and I was moved deeply by Charles Dance's recital of Siegfried Sassoon's "Aftermath"[1]

Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

It's impossible to imagine the horror - even pondering the numbers of fallen in the first day throttles the imagination, let alone the horrific ways in which these men were murdered in swathes.

All the more tragic that many of these young men left their homes to see the world and experience the adventure of war. They had no idea what was in store for them.

[1] http://www.potw.org/archive/potw160.html

et13372• 10 years ago

As a game developer, it saddens me that this[1] is our industry's interpretation of WWI.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ

Retra4• 10 years ago

You're sad that people buying games are trying to have fun?

et13372• 10 years ago

Not at all. I plan on buying and playing the game. I just think they could treat the subject matter with a bit more respect -- at least cut out the dubstep -- without ruining the fun.

secstate2• 10 years ago

Erich Maria Remarque on his book, All Quiet on the Western Front: "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war."

By reducing the suffering of those who partook in WWI to an adventure we insult all those who were destroyed by war.

mercurial3• 10 years ago

Personally, though I find disrespectful, as a French person, that the two nations of the Triple Entente to suffer the most casualties are "available as a DLC", my major problem with the "historical accuracy not included" attitude is that I doubt most people who are going to play that know much of anything about WWI, and this will likely lead to the same kind of myth you have about WWII (ie, "the USA and to a lesser extent the UK did most of the job on the European theater").

13of40• 10 years ago

You know, I'd been avoiding buying an XBox One, but I think that dogfight scene just sold me.

reddytowns2• 10 years ago

If no one got hurt or died in war, it actually would be really fun

aplummer• 10 years ago

Sitting in the mud? Wasting the best years of your life digging a tunnel by hand? Marching and malnutrition?

adrianN• 10 years ago

Which is why we invented paintball, lasertag, MMA and survival sports.

fennecfoxen• 10 years ago

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." -- Robert E Lee

ivanca2• 10 years ago

Where does it says this is an interpretation? How did you get the word "interpretation" in your comment? Where do they claim to be even remotely accurate? They don't, they never did, you are just looking for a reason to complain.

Because in real life teenagers aren't going to think after playing "Oh man war is surely fun" because they are not that stupid, you just pretend they are for your argument's sake.

DominikR3• 10 years ago

Games generally have a different function than teaching you history. Games are about having a fun time, so of course a game about WWI will not try to convey the horrors of trench war. (who would be into that?)

I am sure that people do understand the difference between a game and reality.

rwallace2• 10 years ago

http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html

"For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again."

And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow war leaders when we could have impeached those leaders and thrown them in prison. Probably there is an anthropic selection effect in that this conversation only happens between descendants of killer apes, but that does not excuse us from the last stage of the Great Filter.

Will we learn in time?

ams6110• 10 years ago

War is in our nature, judging from history. I don't think that will change, but I hope I'm wrong.

sporkologist2• 10 years ago

As long as humans fight for resources, there will be conflict.

james-watson• 10 years ago

Ah, but there is great payoff for the Kings and Queens.

Not so much for the pawns.

rwallace2• 10 years ago

Aye, at least given that they are programmed to behave as though their utility function consisted almost entirely of the thrill of wielding power. So, fellow pawns? Stop voting for the damned Kings and Queens. It's a secret ballot; your instincts telling you to vote for the likely next tribal chief are wildly outdated. Vote for whoever demonstrates the most distaste for war - even if they aren't going to win this election, you'll be sending the right message instead of the wrong one.

im3w1l• 10 years ago

Raping and looting though. Couldn't you also be rewarded with land or was that only for the higher ups?

SubiculumCode• 10 years ago

Moving essay.

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

An (un)surprisingly great tribute to that madness is the last episode of Blackadder goes forth (Goodbyeee). I honestly think that the last 5 minutes of Goodbyeee are the greatest piece of television ever filmed.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

+1. I enjoyed the first three Blackadder series as a rollicking laugh, but BA4 had an overall much darker theme - and that last episode, especially the last 5 minutes filled me with more sadness and tears than any other war drama movie ever did... The time lapse of the field at the end after everything falls silent...(excuse me, I have something in my eye!)

Captain Darling: "rather hoped I'd get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says... 'Bugger...'"

dghf• 10 years ago

Darling gets a couple of good bits in that episode. The part where a car comes to take him from his desk job at HQ to the front, and you see the driver only from the long shadow he casts on the office floor, is chilling.

alblue• 10 years ago

Ironically it didn't start out that way. The set was small (15ft), and the first take was reduced by virtue of the fact that the (stage) explosions caused problems for the cast. Roman refused to do another take and they were left with less than five seconds of footage to wrap the episode with.

Necessity meant that they had to run it it in slow motion and with cut angles showing the same scene; that required the addition of a somber musical addition. The cross fade to colour at the end was a stroke of genius at the end to finish it off.

But basically the resulting effect was neither planned nor written; it was an editing necessity based on the lack of footage. This helped win it the BAFTA award in 1989.

DominikR3• 10 years ago

From todays perspective it's really hard for me to understand how different society must have valued their own young men to sacrifice 20.000 within 90 minutes without knowing for sure or at least having a high probability of succeeding. (Keep in mind that populations were generally everywhere much smaller than today)

Today even the strongest militaries in the world are terrified of the possibility that they could loose a few thousand men within a few years of war.

Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more. If it is so then it'll mean that eventually as every society gets richer over time it'll see these mass killings and sacrifices as pure insanity and refrain from it.

I believe we would have less of a mess in the Middle East if there was economic stability and the young men there would have the means (and attitude which is often missing) to reach their goals without resorting to violence. After all it must be obvious even to the crazy people running ISIS that the state they are trying to build cannot be sustainable on the long run only through looting and killing their neighbours, even if they were to win every single battle.

Eventually they would run out of neighbours that they can loot and what then?

Edit: I criticise the attitude of men from the Middle East because since we have now many refugees and immigrants here I had the chance to meet many of them. I've not met a single one that didn't come across as a free loader to me so this leads me to believe that this is nothing unusual in their culture. So it's no wonder to me that they are generally poor over there while countries like Germany are rich.

tremon2• 10 years ago

Maybe it's because we in the West have become so productive that we value every member of society much more

I think it's less a matter of productiveness, and more a matter of connectedness: it's easier to send thousands to their death if they're not your peers. The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others.

Also, the increased transparency of wars and accountability of institutions plays an important role.

DominikR3• 10 years ago

As far as I know the number of friends or connections a person has has been relatively stable in the last few centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

It is not absolutely uncontested but I haven't seen any evidence that the number of connections people have nowadays has increased.

The increased mobility of our society (both social and physical) has blurred and removed many of the old divides (class, vocation, religion) and we're still working on removing others.

I see more of an atomisation of society into ever smaller groups of minorities that fight each other and more class divide than ever. One other symptom of this is the radicalisation that we see particularly with young people.

20 years ago it would have been unfathomable to me to even imagine that teenagers born in the West would decide to join some crazy group that cuts of heads and throws gays off tall buildings.

slededit• 10 years ago

The beginnings of the war didn't see tens of thousands killed in such short periods of time, nor did the war planners anticipate such at the outset. World War I was more about a chaotic system getting away from its designers and turning into something of its own beast.

The trench system was put in place slowly over time, each increment the designers thinking it would only be a temporary set back. The start of the war was much more mobile with land being taken quickly. Initially the Germans had planned to defeat France within 6 weeks.

When this failed Germany was having a tough time on the Russian front and the Triple Entente saw an opportunity to reclaim lost land. Yet by this time modern weapons gave the advantage to the defenders and the war was in stalemate.

Help Me to Die, O Lord

Related Stories