War: history, causes, and consequences

World War I

Dearest Albert:

Hopefully, this letter finds you in better health and fully recuperated from your wounds. How very proud you must be of your medals and of your heroism in the line of fire. The boys here at home all wear theirs to social affairs, and I must admit to my private jealousies at the attention they get, not just from the ladies, or during parades, but also from admirers in general.

I am beset with a nagging guilt at not having participated and at having missed the last glorious opportunity to prove my mettle in action in this final, Great War that has surely ended all war amongst nations and men. Sometimes I feel ashamed in comparison to you, and to the other lads at home who had such a fantastic opportunity. Nor it is it my imagination that the fellows who were soldiers all see me differently, as it is so readily apparent in their eyes and in the looks between and amongst them once they find out that I have not served my country and my people as they (and you) have.

At times I must remind myself that I did not shirk or avoid my patriotic duty; I was simply not selected to serve, through no fault of mine. Nevertheless, I fear that for the rest of my life employers will look at me askance, mates of my generation with indifference, and ladies with pity rather than with the admiration that I might otherwise have earned, given the fair opportunity.

I have not been able to share (or more accurately, to admit to) these sentiments to my folks, nor do I dare amongst any of our mates who served honorably. You are perhaps the only one who might understand. I must ask you candidly, do you think any less of me for having missed this last opportunity for patriotic duty? I look forward greatly to your return my friend, even as I somewhat fear the same look from you that I must now endure from all the other lads who no longer wish to know me as before because they seem to think me a coward.

From your old mate,

Neville

January 13, 1919

Dearest Neville:

Perhaps never a more ironic letter has ever been written than yours to me. The lads showing off their medals at home are not heroes. There are no heroes from this war, at least none that are alive to march proudly in parades at home. The only heroes of the Great War remain bloated beyond recognition in the mud of the Somme, or rotting in very small pieces in the forests of Verdun, or forever maimed and crippled, hobbling about on wooden limbs. Those of us who survived the ordeals of battle relatively unscathed are merely beneficiaries of extremely fortuitous circumstances, or of our own cowardice. I must reluctantly confess to the latter.

The horror of mechanized warfare is utterly inconceivable to anyone who has not endured it. Nor can there be any "patriotic" purpose to sending wave, after wave, after nauseating wave of humanity toward instantaneous annihilation. I, for one, would no longer pledge loyalty to any president or king, nor even wish to remain a citizen in any country who would willingly sacrifice its sons in this manner again, regardless of national purpose.

That you were not called to serve is your greatest fortune, my friend, for you need not find yourself still trembling at the sound of thunder, or the backfire from motorcars, or at the shrill tone of a motorman's whistle. As long as I live, I will never again hear the sound of even a child's toy whistle without reliving some of the horrors and terror of those trenches where an entire generation of young men was destroyed so efficiently.

Those lads marching in parades at home with their shiny medals hanging from around their necks likely never saw frontline duty, likely never faced the prospect of their own imminent annihilation, likely never spent nights huddled in the arms of a mate, trembling more from terror than shivering from the cold, and soaked by their own urine or feces, extracted as it were, by the vacuum of thunderous explosions, each concussion closer to ending your life than the one before.

My very survival is due primarily to my own cowardice, of which I would have likely remained eternally unaware but for my induction into the Great War that has, at least, now ended all wars. I watched hundreds of my mates sent over the top at the sound of that God forsaken whistle only to perish within seconds and utterly without purpose or reason. The boots of many of them hung back over our trench wall, where they died before taking even a single full step in the name of our "great cause," and this is how I was ultimately spared, through creative use of my cowardice: