On this Remembrance Day, Armagny chooses to remember the horror of total war:
Behind such particular, smaller scale, analogies and partisan arguments, played out in nations largely benefitting from a sustained pax, there is the big thing that happened in the two World Wars. There is total war. Slaughter of millions. Loss of entire generations. Loss of cultures, great historical buildings and artifacts, loss of humanity.
I don’t think we remember that, not really, and I don’t think it’s an issue of left or right. My greatest fear is not World War II, the model of the rampant dictator who can’t be placated, but of the Great War, the combination of belligerent (if not quite Hitler-esque) leaderships, appalling diplomatic blunders, and the suction created by a set of interwoven alliances that draws nations that have no real gripe with each other into an unending slaughter.
Personally, I don’t fear a repeat of lengthy total wars between major powers. We may again slaughter each other by the millions, but if we do so it will be all over in hours, not years. And, so far, that realization has prevented (by a hair’s breadth, on at least one occasion) world leaders from giving it a try.
But the knowledge that we could compress the misery of the world wars into just a few short hours certainly gives me pause on this Remembrance Day.
Amen to that, brother.
There’d be no spin-off series like “McHale’s Navy”, “Hogan’s Heroes”, or “Allo, Allo”.
“There’d be no spin-off series like “McHale’s Navy”, “Hogan’s Heroes”, or “Allo, Allo”.”
Actually we’re so busy here that we were only just the other day discussing the observation that it would probably be impossible to make those kind of shows now. Laughing about the war was once a great industry but nostaligia has put paid to that.
Now it’s all reverence and faux nationalism. Blackadder was probably the last to make fun of global belligerence and that was in a quite different way. I remember the Goons (in rerun I’m not that old) constantly poking fun at the military that they all served in.
We are the poorer for it.
Excellent point PatrickB.
The situation you describe is tantamount to us living in a post-apocalyptic cultural desert.
I don’t always go to ANZAC day but the last two years have been packed: apparently this years in Perth was the biggest in Australia! I’m not sure if that’s true or not but the point is I think a lot of people are suitably enouh worried about what has happened in the last decade! The cultural desert part has to be our lauding of Capitalism as a god: hey, according to me Capitalism didn’t get us to the moon! [...Pass it on!]
Not to mention Catch 22 or The Good Soldier Schweik.
I saw a bit of the British armistice day coverage the other day (remembrance Sunday) and there was this master of ceremonies for the day from a nowhere town in nowhereville (like most of the UK) being interviewed. He talked about how “The recent deaths of those soldiers in Iraq had really lifted the day (in a bad way of course)” and “The trouble in Afghanistan gives the ceremony more meaning this year (sadly to say)” and “Grimsby has a new community spirit because of these deaths”. You could almost see him salivating, a middle-aged man getting vicarious emotions of honour and valour from remembrance of others’ sad deaths. I had never seen before so clearly the way that these remembrance ceremonies can become glorification ceremonies.
It’s quite a frenetic atmosphere to the remembrance day over here this year, with an ugly edge that monitors other peoples’ nationalism. Reminded me that these ceremonies can still serve a politically nasty role if the mood is right.
I prefer total football.
A Socceroos-Galatasaray friendly on the afternoon of 25th April, then? I’m pretty sure the scoreboard would reflect the Gallipoli result.
Maybe, Chookie, but Galatasaray are essentially a mercenary army, not a decent bunch of nationalists.
Not sure about that, but then I’m another Goons fan (now bringing up Goonish children!).
The reverence is for the dead (though I think it’s misplaced at times; do those Fromelles dead care that they aren’t neatly arranged?). The nationalism is only for the ignorant. You don’t have to read much about WW1 to realise what a tragic shambles it was. Reading an early Biggles book is enough, or having any knowledge of the Gallipoli campaign — let alone the Somme!
Tom Lehrer: “I think if any songs are going to come out of WWIII, we’d better start writing them now. I have a modest example.”
“.. and no shrinking violet
was he!
He wasn’t scared
when WW 3 was declared.
He didn’t care,
No sirree!
And this is what he said on
His way to Armageddon…
‘So long, Mom
I’m off to drop the Bomb
So don’t wait up for me!’
etc.
Anyone seen my “War Prayer”?
I asked for it not to be published until news of my death was finally correct.
seven of my parents uncles were killed in the 14-18 war & we neither forgot or forgive
Working class victims
‘twere one minute to eleven
November the eleventh
Nineteen eighteen …
still … those ruling class mongrels
with military power over ‘ad condemned AWOL
shell shocked prolie sodger’s barbarically executed
enjoying to their last minute power over rebelling
sodger’s whom they fear may take the next social step
alike their russsian comrades had
No one likes us, don’t know why
We may not be perfect, heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us-so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada’s too cold
And South America stole our name
Let’s drop the big one
There’ll be no one left to blame us
We’ll save Australia
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo
We’ll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin’, too
Boom goes London and boom Paris
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We’ll set everybody free
You’ll wear a Japanese kimono babe
And there’ll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now
I could probably have picked you as a Lehrerite Ambi.
Did you catch the RN interview? Like, maybe three years back?
A giant of a man, IMNSHO.
Cheers Robert. Will go reciprocate. On the length of conflict, you may be right, though my impression has been that the buildup of expectations in respect to technology, even the resurgence of air power theory in the late 1980s, dissipated a little through the recent adventures of captain america. But in any event if as you suggest it happened quicker, that may in fact be far worse- far less chance to bring to bear some of the more advanced (ostensibly anyway) diplomatic architecture we now have to put a brake on the momentum.
FDB — for you Lehrerites, are you familiar with the sub-category of late-period Lieber & Stoller?
(*ahem, in D, please*)
Let’s bring
Back World
War One:
The bombs,
the bluster and
the fiiight-ing…
When men
Fought duels
According to
The rules,
And war was so exciting.
If someone shouts me a bottle of vodka and a steak dinner, maybe I’ll do the lyrics to their incomparable “Humphrey Bogart,” doubtless one of the funniest songs ever written. Those guys could make a piano sting funny.
A day or so ago, Mikhail Kalashnikov celebrated his 90th birthday.
He still works at the plant where he designed his famous AK-47 way back in 1947.
A happy man, he opined in an interview that simple things are the best and the best things are simple.
The BBC estimates that one gun in six in the world today is a Kalashnikov or a rip-off of his design.
Kalashnikov invented every war that we are likely to sing about for the foreseeable future.
Armagny, any total war between major industrial powers would go nuclear.
Even if it didn’t, the combination of modern guidance systems and modern aircraft would make “area bombing” far more lethal than it ever was in WWII. And it was plenty lethal then.
cheers, FDB.
Thanks j_p_z.
As a child of the 70′s (and a Labor tragic) all Remembrance Day reminds me of is the Dismissal.
34 years on, I am maintaining the rage for you, Gough.
Re the comedy thing, it is easier to successfully take piss from something you know. Spike had to endure combat fatigue to get his particular slant on matters. Also, the Goons’ audience almost universally knew where a corporal stood in relation to a captain and so on and so forth.
That’s true, Sean.
But in WW3 we’re all enlisted, there is no civilian/military divide. So Tom Lehrer (and all the other post-Bomb comedians) are working with events we could all – heaven forfend – have to deal with.
Mr Twain took a few steps back, and cast a cool eye on the PRE-celebrations, with the lads marching off to war, cheered on by their townsfolk….
Ratty’s schtick as the digger in “Keating, the Musical” was quite amusing.
The essential element of comedy in that schtick was that the image of soldiery adopted by the Lying Rodent was completely anachronistic and inappropriate to the nature of modern war.
Both JWH and our military indoctrinators are the entirely appropriate butt of that comedy.
Yeah Ambigulous, and what about the famous meeting of both strands? If you will believe it, some of my Defence Academy class mates and I can just about recite Doctor Strangelove. My Division kept long-term-loaning it from the ADFA library.
I will believe it, Sean.
A magnificent movie, it’s high-strung blackness entirely suitable for the times.
I’m not surprised by your report, though I WAS surprised circa 1979 when invited to a young RAAF officers’ mess, to hear John Lennon’s “Imagine” played several times. These days nuffink surprises me.
(I hope also never to see a surprise mushroom cloud nearby.)
My favourite Doors song- well, one of ‘em- is THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER!
“Ratty’s schtick as the digger in “Keating, the Musical” was quite amusing.”
Yeah but the shows mentioned were far more mainstream. I’d say that the real problem is that those shows just used the war as their situation. They hardly paid it any heed. That’s seen as taboo nowadays. Even Blackadder treated the war with some gravity.
If you want real satire then view the Beyond the Fringe’s “The Aftermyth of War” (circa 1962)
Anyway, what about F Troop, talk about making fun of military heritage, incompetence, corruption, anyone would think it’s the JSF project.
A lot of assumptions here. If you’ve got precision guided munitions, you don’t need to do area bombing: you can selectively take out factories/communications/whathaveyou. So no need for high civilian casualties, unless of course that is your actual intention, in which case you may as well just go nuclear in the first place. But I doubt a conventional air war these days would be anything like Dresden or Tokyo, or even Hanoi.
As for satirical war films, may I humbly submit Oh! What a Lovely War for your consideration. (Though it can’t match Strangelove.) Something more modern — Three Kings, maybe? Though maybe it wasn’t really antiwar as such, it’s a while since I saw it.
“As for satirical war films…”
w/r/t more recent efforts, “In the Loop” is pretty hard to beat.
I’m still wondering how Roger Ramjet was allowed to be broadcast in 1965! Wonder what Hoover’s reaction was?
And let’s hear for James Forrestal the bloke who nearly brought us WWIII. I am wondering whether the George C. Scott character in Dr Strangelove is based on him or Curtis Le May or a combination of both.
Curtis Le May was represented by Col Jack D. Ripper, Sir Henry. I can’t remember the actor’s name, though. (I think Scott played Gen Buck Turgidson – Kubrick obviously had a ball with the names.)
As for Roger Ramjet, Chookie, we used to skive off from Maths lectures to watch it at Uni. I think it got ignored because it was for children.
Sterling Hayden played Jack D. Ripper. In checking the Wiki entry on Dr Strangelove, some gems turned up. I quote directly:
Mr Irving, I’m shocked. Did this Ramjet person prove any theorems?
Not a one, Euclid, but he was a bit more entertaining than Cauchy.