Thoughts I just posted to my First Division Rags page: https://facebook/firstdivisionrags On June 28, 1914, the world as everyone then living knew it began to slip like a broad, deceptively quiet river ever faster toward the edge of a raging waterfall, where it splashed and smashed against rocks below, changing established realities forever. An Austrian archduke nobody much cared for or about was assassinated in Sarajevo beside the wife he had broken all the rules of his caste to marry, because he loved her, and died begging her, killed by a bullet, to live, while his own life ebbed away. Levers and gears set in place by the abuses of empires old and fading (Austria) and an empire young and foolhardy (Germany), and a general failure of diplomacy so criminal there are no punishments equal to the destruction it allowed to be born, clicked and began to function as a machine, and that machine was world war. So began the toppling of dominoes and thrones throughout Europe, the snuffing out of lights people had hoped would always glow. Had we studied a map of our world of 1914-1918, our eyes would fall on a terrain scored by trenches and defense lines, each fresh wound or ugly scar edged with opposing troops standing like tin soldiers set up by European rulers child-like in high expectations of a conflict in which they had rushed so heedlessly. These figures would stand on the map from France in the north to Russia in the east and to Turkey in the south. Along with these men, representative of a generation not to live long enough to know what they were supposed to be when they grew up, we would see the troops of another army: horses, mules, donkeys, oxen, camels, pigeons, dogs. All were summoned to the service of a conflict even the most blood-thirsty warmonger would have to agree none had done anything to cause, nor should have to do anything to resolve, offering the supreme sacrifice for the winning of a few acres of mud or sand (usually lost again that or the next day). Though many of the animals who have assisted in wars and occupation seem eager to please their human masters, it cannot be stated often enough that none of them was ever given a choice. Like so many of these animals whose names and fates are not known, Rags of the First Division was a hero. Like theirs, his life speaks to the wider story of the courage and compassion man and animal are capable of showing each other, of how that compassion lives on from battle to battle, from heart to heart, across oceans and across time. Let us remember this centenary of what was called the Great War not just for the deeds of humans but for the animals who, unlike the soldiers they helped, whose cause they suffered and died for, did not have a choice, and still were brave.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 19:21:06 +0000
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