The Prison Mirror

Fruitless effort?

"Away on our left in the Solomon area we could hear what is even at a distance the most terrifying thing on earth—the pounding of heavy guns, now fainter, now louder, but coalescing always into one dull thundering roar. . . . At night the sky was lit with the flashes and flickered strangely with a yellow, restless glow. . . . I sometimes wondered whether I should mind being killed after all. But on days like this I cannot help wanting passionately to live. Life seemed never more attractive. . . . I dreaded going to bed because of the shock of acute realization with which I awoke every morning."

"The fox-holes have been nearly all blown in, the wire entanglements are a wreck, and in among the chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men who poured out their red, sweet wine of youth, unknowing, for nothing more tangible than Honor or their country's Glory or another's Lust for Power. Let him who thinks war is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking Honor and Praise and Valor and Love of Country, let him but look at a little pile of sodden khaki rags that covers half a skull and a shin-bone, or at this body lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect but that it is headless; and let him realize how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all youth, joy, and life into a formless heap of hideous death! Who is there who has known and seen who can say that Victory is worth the death of even one of these?"

Has there really been a time, I wondered, when I believed that there was? ...

For isn't it as John Masefield so cleverly interpreted, 'It is not a song in the street and a wreath on a column and a flag flying from a window and a pro-Nazi under a pump. It is a thing very holy and very terrible, like life itself. It is a burden to be borne, a thing to labor for and to suffer for and to die for, a thing which gives no happiness and no pleasantness—but a hard life, an unknown grave, and the respect and bowed heads of those who follow.'