I don't often comment on the news, and I just don't see the point in cutting and pasting great chunks from other websites on to a personal blog - sometimes with no personal take on the article added. However, sometimes a bit of national news strikes a personal chord, and today was a case in point.
Today there was a report on two more deaths in Afghanistan, and suddenly it struck me more forcibly than ever before: that's two more mothers going through what my friend Becky is going through - two more extended families that will never be the same again . . . parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, godparents, schoolfriends, family friends . . . who for ever will find that there is a hole in their lives where that young man should have been. For those who live away, the sense of loss will be infrequent, hitting only at Christmas and other family occasions when he should have been there, but for the immediate family, long after the process of unbelief and grief have gone from every waking hour, there will be daily those moments when (as Wordsworth put it) "Surprised by joy . . . I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom / But Thee?"
I've always known that war was wicked. I've written about it more than once on this blog - usually around November 11th. Somewhere there are petitions with my signature among thousands of others protesting about the Falklands War and both Iraq Wars, but somehow these deaths so soon after the death of my godson brought home to me for how many each loss is a personal tragedy.
That was two British soldiers. What of all the other nationalities, not least the Afghans themselves? Just because it is a different culture, it doesn't make the personal loss any less when a son is killed.
Surprised by joy impatient as the wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
jollyweez
I lived with my beloved grandmother, (born 1884) until I was ten. She grieved often for her first dear husband, killed near Suvla Bay in Gallipoli after only three weeks.
The soldier who returned the items found on him, married her and became my grandfather. Grandma nursed his shrapnel wounds until he died eight years later, of same. He had many medals for saving men from the open spaces near his trench. After he died, my grandmother had nothing but the medals. She had to go back to sewing gloves.
I feel we should pull all our 'boys' out of those savage places and bring them home. Their minds will be ruined, even though they may come home in one piece. There have been defeats of every invader into Afghanistan, since the early archives of Alexander the Great!
War Is Hell on Earth.