I haven't done any serious news/current affairs blogging for a while. I have found the Iraq situation deeply depressing. I have found the lies we were told to justify it depressing, and a callous disregard for life displayed too often. I have found the arguments of pro-and anti- camps often sliding into the simplistic, my own included. I have despaired at the situation post-war. I stopped believing a long time ago in the sweet smell of victory.
Removing Saddam has been at a high price, lives lost, infrastructure destroyed - leading to more loss of life. I can view the rise of the religious groups with some trepidation. I fear for a world where there is one hyper-power, with its three disreputable poodles allies, fuelled by an ideology called 'neo-con' that needs hegemony in the Middle East. I am disturbed by the polarised rhetoric from right and left, whatever right and left may be, the anti-this, pro-that, my religion's better than your religon. I want a world where people are free and able to lead boring lives. (I recognise that I'm being hopelessly naive - of course it will never happen).
Concurrent with following the events in Iraq I have been reading a little bit about the Second World War. I am ploughing through Roy Jenkins' epic biography of Winston Churchill. I would highly recommend it, incidentally - it gives a view of the man which is far from hagiographic, but is also a tremendously readable account of nearly one hundred years history. Churchill was in the Cabinet, and then a serving officer in World War 1, and, of course, was Prime Minister for much of World War 2.
I have previously read considerably about World War 1 - from Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth to textbooks to war poems. The numbers of casualties in WW1 defy my understanding - 60,000 allies killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of The Somme, a battle which saw 1 million casualties dead or wounded. The sheer utter waste of so many young men fighting a war whose causes were obscure, and, far from being the war to end all wars, is still being fought in 2003.
The Second World War seems at first to be a sharp contrast. Britain went to war for fairly honourable reasons, although had lost her honour by not going to war earlier. There was not the horror and waste and futility of the Trenches, or of Gallipoli - not Churchill's finest hour. The myths and legends surrounding the glorious days when Britain stood alone do not bear too much examination - those that remember it say it was horrible.
Yet, it is only recently that I have begun to understand the scale of casualties in that war. Jenkins says, "Deaths from bombing settled down at somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 a month, a sustainable haemorrhage."
Last week's New Statesman (online version only available on payment) carried a review by Jan Morris of Fortress Malta: an island under siege by James Holland. The review carries a vivid description of Operation Pegasus -
In August 1942, when the island lay in ruins, food was running out and the Spitfires were almost out of fuel, two elderly battleships of the Royal Navy, together with four carriers, seven cruisers and 24 destroyers, set out from the Straits of Gibraltar to convoy 14 merchant ships to the relief of Malta. About 600 German and Italian aircraft lay in wait for them, with submarines, E-boats, cruisers and destroyers. For eight days they ploughed on through waves and walls of bombs and torpedoes, through unending swarms of screaming Stukas and U-boats. A carrier, two cruisers and a destroyer were sunk, as were nine of the 14 merchant ships, and the most vital vessel of the convoy, the tanker Ohio, which was carrying 11,000 vital tons of aircraft fuel, was so crippled that she was kept afloat and moving only by two warships lashed to her sides.
After reading these, and much more besides, I ask myself - how did people stand it? Is it true that we are so unused to death that we are frightened of it? I can accept death when the person dying is old, or when they have been ill for a long time. I grieve but it doesn't destroy me. How did people cope with months and months of bombing?
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