Saturday Jess

Tags

Armistice Day, Kipling, Military Wives, Remembrance Day, United States, Veterans Day

As some of you know, Steve Brown in comments earlier this week suggested that we bring forward Jessica’s best posts on a more regular basis. This made sense to both Chalcedon and I, part of the reason we continued the blog during Jess’ illness was to protect her posts. Chalcedon thought I was best placed to fulfill this responsibility, and he is perhaps correct in that.

When I left her to run Nebraska Energy Observer over Christmas one year she said that:

[A]s well as to say some very nice things about me; both are characteristic of him: he makes his decisions about who can be trusted, and he trusts them, but is not slow to offer encouragement and praise; these are signs of leadership – and if we look at our societies that’s a quality in short supply.

That’s as it may be but now is my chance to return the favor by living up to the responsibility placed in me, and do honor to my dearest Jessica. I don’t know yet how this will structure but what we’re going to try to do, is make it relevant to the week’s posts, drawing both from her work here and and NEO as well. We are also going to try to make it a weekly feature, although I don’t really feel I can guarantee that yet either. But those are the twin goals.

These will appear under my by’line for convenience but they are entirely Jessica’s work

For this week, we are going to go back to Remembrance/Veterans/Armistice Day, because Jess always wants us to remember those also serve who wait and worry, and yes, love. From Nebraska Energy Observer.

Thin red line of heroes?

I don’t know how it is in the USA with civilian/military relations in everyday life, but, as ever, Kipling in his Tommy still sums up the British attitude:

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

As a sometime Army wife, I know this all too well.  For a long time, thanks to IRA activity, British soldiers were advised to wear civvies when off duty, and it is indicative of something bad that the first reaction of some of the Top Brass to the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby was to suggest that soldiers might want to revert to that; it is indicative of something right that our soldiers give the old two-fingered saute to such nonsense.

But there’s bound to be a divide between civilians and the military in times of peace when you have a professional army. Although the analogy with Monks might raise an eyebrow or two, there is a parallel (no, not that one).  Soldiers live a life apart. They are trained to do things which ordinary people don’t do, and probably don’t want to do.There has to be a high level of commitment, and at times the dedication to duty means that a soldier puts everything else to one side. Although no soldier’s wife worth her salt would dream of saying so, we all wait in terror for the knock on the door or the telephone call from the CO. Every time we kiss and wave good-bye, we know that for at least one of us, it is the final good-bye. And if your marriage doesn’t come to that honorable end, well the stress and strains on your man and marriage may make it come to another sort of end. The price soldiers pay to serve us all is huge.  But they also serve, who only stand and wait – and love.

Yes, here in the UK on 11 November, Armistice Day, we all remember our armed forces and the glorious dead, and we have pubic ceremonies where we celebrate and congratulate out Armed Forces; but what about the other 364 days? Well, unless there is a particularly horrible series of death, we forget – the ‘we’ being the vast majority of the population who know nothing and care less about our soldiers sailors and airmen.

I don’t know whether it is different in the US, but here, the armed forces are very much the Cinderella services – except when they are needed. Kipling, as ever, said it best:

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

But how thin does that red line have to be before it breaks?