The Cost of War

[Jubilee]

I took this from The Two Swords, at the beginning. As it says I didn't write it, R. A. Salvatore did for Drizzt. Its a quote thats always stood out in my mind and I finally got around to coping it. I edited a handful of words you might spot, to better adapt it to current times, but I think it still, and will always, be true.

[quote="R. A. Salvatore":1czexrs3]I look upon the hillside, quiet now except for the birds. That’s all there is. The birds, cawing and cackling and poking their beaks into unseeing eyeballs. Crows do not circle before they alight on a field strewn with the dead. They fly as the bee to a flower, straight for their goal, with so great a feast before them. They are the cleaners, along with the crawling insects, the rain, and the unending wind.

And the passage of time. There is always that. The turn of the day, of the season, of the year.

When it is done, all that is left are the bones and the stones. The screams are gone, the smell is gone. The blood is washed away. The fattened birds take with them in their departing flights all that identified these fallen warriors as individuals.

Leaving the bones and the stones, to mingle and mix. As the wind or the rain break apart the skeletons and filter them together, as the passage of time buries some, what is left becomes indistinguishable, perhaps, to all but the most careful of observers. Who will remember those who died here, and what have they gained to compensate for all that they, on both sides, lost?

The look upon a soldiers face when battle is upon him would argue, surely, that the price is worth the effort, that warfare, when it comes to their nation, is a noble cause. Nothing to a warrior is more revered than fighting to help a friend; theirs is a community bound tightly by loyalty, by blood shared and blood spilled.

And so, in the life of an individual, perhaps this is a good way to die, a worthy end to a life lived honorably, or even to a life made worthy by this last ultimate sacrifice.

I cannot help but wonder, though, in the larger context, what of the overall? What of the price, the worth, the gain? Will they accomplish anything worth the hundreds, perhaps thousands of his dead? Will they gain anything long-lasting? Will the soldiers stand made out here on this high cliff bring their people anything worthwhile? Could they have not slipped into safety, to bases so much more easily defended?

And a hundred years from now, when there remains only dust, will anyone care?

I wonder what fuels the fires that burn images of glorious battle into the hearts of so many of the sentient races, my own paramount among them. I look at the carnage on the slope and I see the inevitable sight of emptiness. I imagine the cries of pain. I hear in my head the calls for loved ones when the dying warrior knows his last moment is upon him. I see a truck burn with my dearest friend inside. Surely the tangible remnants, the wreckage and the bones, are hardly worth the moment of battle, but is there, I wonder, something less tangible here, something of a greater place? Or is there, perhaps-and this is my fear-something of a delusion to it all that drives us to war, again and again?

Along that latter line of thought, is it within us all, when the memories of war have faded, to so want to be a part of something great that we throw aside the quiet, the calm, the mundane, the peace itself? Do we collectively come to equate peace with boredom and complacency? Perhaps we hold these embers of war within us, dulled only be sharp memories of the pain and the loss, and when that smothering blanket dissipates with the passage of healing time, those fires flare again to life. I saw this within myself, to a smaller extent, when I realized and admitted to myself that I was not a being of comfort and complacency, that only by the wind on my face, the trails beneath my feat, and the adventure along the road could I be truly happy.

I’ll walk those trails indeed, but it seems to me that it is another thing all together to carry an army along beside me, as they have done. For there is the consideration of a larger morality here, shown so starkly in the bones among the stones. We rush to the call of arms, to the rally, to the glory, but what of those caught in the path of this thirst for greatness?

Who will remember those who died here, and what have they gained to compensate for all that they, on both sides, lost?

Whenever we lose a loved one, we resolve, inevitably, to never forget, to remember that dear person for all our living days. But we the living contend with the present, and the present often commands all of our attention. And so as the years pass, we do not remember those who have gone before us every day, or even every tenday. Then comes the guilt, for am I not remembering Zaknafein my father, my mentor, who sacrificed himself for me, then who is? And if no one is, then perhaps he is really gone. As the years pass, the guilt will lessen, because we forget more consistently and the pendulum turns in our self-serving thoughts to applaud ourselves on those increasingly rare occasions when we do remember ! There is always the guilt, perhaps, because we are self-centered creatures to the last. It is the truth of individuality that cannot be denied. In the end, we, all of us, see the world through our own, personal eyes.

I have heard parents express their fears of their own mortality soon after the birth of a child. It is a fear that stays with a parent, to a great extent, through the first dozen years of a child’s life. It is not for the child that they fear, should they die-though surely there is that worry, as well-but rather for themselves. What father would accept his death before his child was truly old enough to remember him?

For who better to put a face to the bones among the stones? Who better to remember the sparkle in an eye before the crow comes a’calling?

I wish the crows would circle and the wind would carry them away, and the faces would remain forever to remind us of the pain. When the clarion call to glory sounds, before the armies anew trample the bones among the stones, let the faces of the dead remind us of the cost.

It is a sobering though before me, the red-splashed stones. It is a striking warning in my ears, the cawing of the crows.[/quote:1czexrs3]

[Shir'le E. Illios]

I hope you don't mind, but I edited your post to fix the line-breaks so as to make it a bit more readable.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[Jubilee]

Whoops, hehe. Thanks Shirl'e ! *huggles*

[Shir'le E. Illios]

My pleasure. [i:71v2wc2z]<huggles>[/i:71v2wc2z]


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le