Totally worth the time to read. Some of it hits very differently in a post 9/11 post Covid world than it probably did when written. 9/11 was a reminder of the war fever; Covid of how desperately we want to forget. Of course both pale in comparison to the horrors of WWII.
I think it is fair to say that the USA rediscovered war fever after the attacks on home soil. It resulted in the land invasion of two countries.
> There's a phrase people sometimes use about a nation's collective reaction to events like Pearl Harbor -- war fever. We don't know what a true war fever feels like today, since nothing in our recent history compares with it; even a popular war like the gulf war was preceded by months of solemn debate and a narrow vote in Congress approving military action.
I was unfamiliar with the author but when I read this bit I started hunting for a publication date - 1997.
This was one of the most incredible essays about war I've ever read. At some points I forgot that I was even reading an essay about war, but everything came together in the end.
I think Sandlin was one of the few authors (perhaps alongside Remarque) that could adequately capture the silent resignation into fear (or 'fey' as he put it) that so many people have; my father was one of those people, and while his time at war was something I barely understand and was never told about—probably to shield me—his description of those restless nights dreaming of patrolling Okinawa (or Fallujah, Kandahar, or Kashmir) are something that truely can't be described by the language of peace, or even by people who were not there—like myself.
There's a certain melancholy in the tone of the entire essay, something that I think grips so many people in my generation (and that Sandlin mentions while describing Wagner): the belief that while life continues on as normal today, the world is about to be irreparably changed for the worse; perhaps we'll go to war with China, Russia, Iran, or some other country, but in the aftermath, everything we've taken for granted in life will be completely gone. I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return—and if they do, just like Eugene Sledge, the entire world around them will be completely different. And eventually, no one will care to hear about their war stories and their memories of it will fade.
I didn't know it was still possible to read something which would add so much to my understanding of the central event in the century I was born. I may have to read it again.
He mentions that every war since Napoleon is different, fought with different technology.
It would be nice if war could be traced back to just shifting of technological power. Maybe the development of tanks makes one war inevitable, and the development of ICBMs makes another war inevitable.
And one day if we're very lucky, technology will be Good Enough and it will plateau and things can coalesce into a global government with no border and few standing military. It might be over 100 years, I might not live to see it.
It would be nice if war was not an endemic part of the human condition, but just the shocks and aftershocks of tectonic shifts, and one day the ringing will die out as everything is abundant enough.
But considering the wars before Napoleon, maybe it is endemic.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] thread> There's a phrase people sometimes use about a nation's collective reaction to events like Pearl Harbor -- war fever. We don't know what a true war fever feels like today, since nothing in our recent history compares with it; even a popular war like the gulf war was preceded by months of solemn debate and a narrow vote in Congress approving military action.
I was unfamiliar with the author but when I read this bit I started hunting for a publication date - 1997.
I think Sandlin was one of the few authors (perhaps alongside Remarque) that could adequately capture the silent resignation into fear (or 'fey' as he put it) that so many people have; my father was one of those people, and while his time at war was something I barely understand and was never told about—probably to shield me—his description of those restless nights dreaming of patrolling Okinawa (or Fallujah, Kandahar, or Kashmir) are something that truely can't be described by the language of peace, or even by people who were not there—like myself.
There's a certain melancholy in the tone of the entire essay, something that I think grips so many people in my generation (and that Sandlin mentions while describing Wagner): the belief that while life continues on as normal today, the world is about to be irreparably changed for the worse; perhaps we'll go to war with China, Russia, Iran, or some other country, but in the aftermath, everything we've taken for granted in life will be completely gone. I think an entire generation of young men now believe that they'll eventually be shipped off to some war and might not return—and if they do, just like Eugene Sledge, the entire world around them will be completely different. And eventually, no one will care to hear about their war stories and their memories of it will fade.
The best histories are the ones that give you a sense of what it was like to be there and then. This essay (or novella?) does so in spades.
He mentions that every war since Napoleon is different, fought with different technology.
It would be nice if war could be traced back to just shifting of technological power. Maybe the development of tanks makes one war inevitable, and the development of ICBMs makes another war inevitable.
And one day if we're very lucky, technology will be Good Enough and it will plateau and things can coalesce into a global government with no border and few standing military. It might be over 100 years, I might not live to see it.
It would be nice if war was not an endemic part of the human condition, but just the shocks and aftershocks of tectonic shifts, and one day the ringing will die out as everything is abundant enough.
But considering the wars before Napoleon, maybe it is endemic.