And in the Morning

‘It must have been so exciting to live then. I wish I could fight in a battle,’ his young fire-eater of a grandson exclaimed, as his grandfather finished telling a ruthlessly expurgated tale of dragons and combat.

His eyes met those of his son as he came to remove the youngster and carry him off to his bed, and they exchanged looks redolent of bitter memory.

‘I wonder what it was really like,’ his granddaughter sighed more thoughtfully, as she joined them, kissing her grandfather as she took her father’s hand.

He left the house then, finding their naïve enthusiasm hard to endure.  And yet, had that not been, at least in part, the purpose of it all?  That youngsters should be able to grow in safety, able to choose their paths through life to suit their talents and wishes, living in ignorance of shadow and evil?  His own sons had been committed to the lives of warriors from their earliest breaths, needed to defend their people regardless of what they would have chosen, born and raised to a life of risk and duty.

He sat on the cliff top, looking out over the crawling sea, as the setting sun warmed his back and cast his long shadow over the edge.

Battle was no children’s tale, he sighed. It was no bloodless quest for glory and renown.  Did it not dishonour the struggles of those lost to make it one?  And yet – if the tales were not told at all, was that not worse? His father had died, together with half his army, in an effort to defeat evil.  If that tale was put away, only to be brought out and shared with those who had fought in that and similar battles, then how would those still to come learn to understand the value of the sacrifice?

Yet it was the things you could never tell them that would make them understand.

He had seen many young warriors lose their innocence to war. They had started out with fire in their eyes, just like that youngster, who would now be doubtless bouncing on his bed, wooden sword in his hand, as he refused to give in to sleep.  Then, the agony of seeing the damage weapons could do to living creatures, the hacked limbs, the spilled guts, the stench of blood, the screams of pain; and, even worse, the anguish of inflicting that damage on others; the torment of seeing such things happen to their friends; the shock of suffering injury themselves, all brought doubt and disgust where before there had been confidence and conviction.  If they survived, these novices came to an accommodation that enabled them to live with what they saw and did: it was needful.  But they were never the same as they had been, and again he had had to feel that he was presiding over the destruction of something precious.

How many warriors had he seen go to their deaths?  Too many.  Both those whom he had led and for whose loss he felt guilt as much as gratitude, and those who had been his allies, as well as countless enemy dead.  To some, it had always seemed an exercise in futility; a fight that was not worth the suffering it caused: he could not agree.

He looked up at the stars that powdered the night sky and asked himself whether the dead outnumbered the dots of light, or whether each flash might reflect the brightness of a soul sacrificed to the cause.

Faces appeared before his mind’s eye, from warriors he had known since his earliest youth, who had held him on the backs of their horses when he was too young to ride, who told him stories and played with him, through to those who had trained him in the skills he needed, who had stood by his side in his first skirmishes and dealt with his disillusionment, only to fall in later battles, and on to those whom he had seen born, watched grow to adult strength and power only to have them meet their deaths at his command.  He remembered his father, whose pride and intrepidity had contributed to the fall of so many, and relived the slow erosion of his forces by the creeping dark. Those who had seemed old to him in his youth, his contemporaries, warriors young enough to be his sons and grandsons: all dead, so that these children might be free.

Had it been worthwhile?  He believed it had.  More, those warriors, too, had believed the struggle to be essential. Although that was not to say that it had been entirely justifiable. No situation that led to such a destruction of life should be considered a righteous end in itself, but he knew that, here at least, the alternative would have been far worse and a stand had had to be taken.

The moon rose and set, its cool indifferent light failing to help him resolve the pain of memories that were keeping him awake.  That was the trouble; to be sentient was to have to pick from endless difficult options. Had those uncounted thousands made their own decisions, or had they merely been fulfilling their oaths of obedience to their leaders?  How much responsibility did he have to take for directing them into the paths that had led them to torment and death?

It was easier if he focused on the enemy they had been fighting.  Protecting the innocent by preventing their triumph seemed far less debatable. The choice had truly not been between fighting and peace, but between fighting and annihilation, and that was really no choice at all.

He dropped his head in his hands and rubbed his temples.  The Enemy’s defeat and his own eventual withdrawal from the arena had given him entirely too much time to ponder on times past. During those long years when survival was foremost in his mind, he had planned from crisis to crisis, seizing the few quiet periods to try to out-think his opponents.  He had not had enough time to spend it brooding over the morality of the situation.

A hand rested briefly on his shoulder.  ‘Are you all right, father?’ his son asked.

‘I am finding all those deaths to be weighing heavily on my conscience tonight, my son,’ he replied.

His son sat beside him, and his father knew that he would be seeing a succession of faces from his own past, that he would be mourning his own dead.

‘We did what we had to do, father,’ he said reassuringly.

‘I know,’ he answered. ‘Although that would be more consolation did I not also know that the enemy would now be saying the same thing.’

A slight change of colour began to reveal the division between sea and sky. Father and son watched in silence as the sky gradually took on the fiery hues of dawn.

‘I want your children never to know the reality of war, my son,’ he said fiercely. ‘And yet – they gave their lives for this moment and I do not want them to be forgotten.’

His son’s hand took his firmly.  ‘We will remember them, father.  We will remember them.’

***

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(With reference to For the Fallen (September 1914) by Laurence Binyon.

            They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

            Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

            At the going down of the sun and in the morning

            We will remember them.)