Void of Emotion

It is commonly viewed that soldiers are heroic and courageous. They have either fought or are fighting for a just cause and are the truest form of patriotism. These images are what people have chosen to see. There is no way to know what horrors a soldier has seen while in combat. And there is no way to know how they are going to handle it upon returning home. Modris Ekstein and Ernest Hemingway both wrote stories about World War I.

In “Rites of Spring” Ekstein describes the living conditions and emotions of the soldiers while fighting in Verdun. He explains how soldiers have a void of emotion when it comes to death. He wrote that when soldiers were digging up trenches, they would find decaying bodies and would simply shovel them out of the way as if they were just dirt. He also described how the men were desensitized by all the gruesome images they were forced to see during battle. One soldier explains how he watched a master marksman was shot in the head and they carried him with brain matter running down his face and fully conscious back to a tunnel.
These horrible circumstances leave emotional scars on soldiers for the rest of their lives. In Ernest Hemingway's story he tells of a young man who has returned from war and has lost touch with his emotions. He can no longer feel love and is caught in a constant rotation day in day out. Probably suffering from PTSD, Harold rarely found himself out of bed. The war had hardened him and his family did not understand the extent of his sadness and depression. They wanted him to find a job and find a woman to settle down with. But when he returned home he had lost his interest in relationships. Women were too complicated and he was tired of telling lies.

Ekstein and Hemingway's stories are similar in the way that they describe the loss of emotion their characters had to suffer. Ekstein wrote that some men were lucky enough to not lose their sense or love and adventure because they were on the calmer parts of the front-line. But others were not so lucky and were forced to be a part of a different war that was not kind to them. The men faced hostile living conditions and witnessed so much death that they became immune to its effects. This was shown in the way Harold acts when he returned home. The way Hemingway described him made him seem cold just as the soldiers in Ekstein’s story.

War forced the men in both stories to void themselves of all emotion to survive war. The way both authors write their stories is chilling and insightful into the hard lives of men during the First World War. Emotions are what make humans human and these men had to give up a part of them to make it through terrible experiences.

            

War

War is not a topic I know much about. Not that it is a subject that I don’t find interesting; I just have never done much research on the aspects or the history it. I do not know what planning goes into preparing for war, nor do I understand the amount of time and effort that goes into concocting a plan for a mission or the way a war is started.

When I think of was I see horses running towards the enemy and brave young men falling to their death with a trickle of blood running down form their helmet and a fellow comrade falling to their knees to mourn the death of his beloved friend. Now that I have read books such as Band of Sisters and Black Hawk Down, I understand that this is not the case at all. Rather, men and women alike are riding in vehicles and holding automatic guns while carrying out missions with a group of likely trained soldiers.

I cannot really grasp the severity of war. I have read these books, and especially in Black Hawk Down, the amount of violence that occurred is evidence enough that war is not to be taken lightly. But how does someone understand what it is really like to be at war when all we see is what is given to us on the TV? The soldiers and the citizens of wherever the war is taking place are the people who are directly impacted and are the only people who know exactly what it feels like to be put into a life or death situation. What the soldiers go through obviously is carried home with them and can affect their family lives.

The amount of stress put on combat soldiers is unimaginable. I understand that they are trained for combat but when they are put into an actual life threatening situation, their training can only go so far especially when it comes to mental preparedness. When a soldier in training is being shot at they know that they are not being targeted to be killed. But when they are in a combat situation, the bullets that are aimed at them are aiming to find their target and kill whoever is on the other end of the barrel. Training cannot fully mentally prepare a soldier for that amount of emotion.

Soldiers are brave, no doubt about it. They put their lives on the line for whatever reason they decided to join the military and do their job if they want to or not. It doesn’t matter if the soldier is at a desk or in the field. Being able to be away from their loved ones or their chosen place of comfort is emotionally trying and something I do not think I could personally ever do.