For the day
Nov. 11th, 2005 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nancylebovIt's armistice day, and there are a lot of posts about how bad it is and was to be a soldier.
That hell was imposed by soldiers on soldiers, but the talk is about heroism, mourning, and suffering. The bombs and the bullets are in the air, with no hint that someone was pulling the trigger.
There isn't much at any time about the civilians who had the misfortune to be living where someone else decided to have a war. Soldiers are supplied, armed, organized, and paid. None of those four are likely to be good most of the time, but think about how much worse it's likely to be if you don't have any of the them.
I bet all of us have some refugees in our ancestry as well as the soldiers we're encouraged to identify with. The refugees survived (or at least those we're descended from did), didn't cause much harm in the process, and get remarkably little notice. After all, they weren't identified with big impressive organizations and they weren't killing anyone.
That hell was imposed by soldiers on soldiers, but the talk is about heroism, mourning, and suffering. The bombs and the bullets are in the air, with no hint that someone was pulling the trigger.
There isn't much at any time about the civilians who had the misfortune to be living where someone else decided to have a war. Soldiers are supplied, armed, organized, and paid. None of those four are likely to be good most of the time, but think about how much worse it's likely to be if you don't have any of the them.
I bet all of us have some refugees in our ancestry as well as the soldiers we're encouraged to identify with. The refugees survived (or at least those we're descended from did), didn't cause much harm in the process, and get remarkably little notice. After all, they weren't identified with big impressive organizations and they weren't killing anyone.
