Dead Man Walking

     This week our English 132 class is required to write our blog discussing two articles the professor handed out.  We have to make a connection between an excerpts from the book Rites of Spring: The Great War and the birth of the modern age by Modris Eksteins and Soldier’s Home, a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The two stories are written from two different perspectives during World War I, the perspective of soldiers in the midst of battle and the other of a soldier’s postwar return home.
     The Rites of Spring story opens immediately by telling of the massive bombing and shelling the soldiers were experiencing.  The huge shells that were being launched in their direction upon impact created holes in the ground the size of swimming pools and men were being blown to pieces. These soldiers were seeing those around them dying every day.  The smell of death and decomposition was so thick in the air that it was permeating everything the soldiers ate and drank.  Due to all the rain fall and enemy shelling, there were body parts from deceased soldiers continuing to be unearthed.  To see other humans and especially your friends blown to pieces just messes with a person’s mind. This had to play an even greater emotional toll on the remaining soldiers to have to muck through trenches around miscellaneous body parts to hold the battle line, which brings me to Krebs in the story of Soldier’s Home.
    If Krebs were to have actually been one of the soldiers in the war depicted in the article the Rites of Spring, I can definitely see how one may have experienced the trauma of war. Upon returning home, Krebs had a difficult time finding his place in society again.  Even though other men had already come back from the war and settled in to their roles in society, not everyone handles trauma the same. The Krebs family, at first, seemed understanding.  However, it only took about a month and they were ready for him to just “snap out of it” and move on with life, especially his father.  It really bothered me when his mom compared him with the Simmons boy.  Saying that he has a good job, he was settling down, and that he was on his way to being a real credit to the community.  Wow! How is that supposed to make a person feel? It would make me feel even worse than I did already.  He lies about little inconsequential events and then feels bad about it.  It leads me to believe that he is battling his ghosts from the war along with a healthy dose of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The war just seemed to have destroyed his spirit.  Krebs was a bit hollow.  He seemed to have lost the meaning of life, his purpose, and the will to want to make any effort to make anything out of his life.  His mother made a pitiful attempt at a pep talk which goes horribly wrong.  Another example of his emptiness when he tell his mother he doesn’t love her.  The trauma of war took away is ability to love anything, including himself.

Successful Communication during Conflict is Imperative.



I am having to write a blog for my English class. The professor gave us two articles to read and make comments comparing them with our previously assigned reading Black Hawk Down.  It would seem fitting on a blog that these are my personal opinions.

The New York Times reports that last Thursday an American soldier was killed during a raid trying to free prisoners from an ISIS outpost. The author of the article, Michael Gordon, was sure to mention that the soldier who was killed was not only an American but the first American killed in action since the withdrawal in 2011. I find it interesting that this fact was included in this article. Even though America has officially withdrawn troops from the area, we have continued to offer joint assistance to fight against ISIS.  

This mission was a classified, joint strike with commandos on the ground and in the air against ISIS that, according to top officials, proved fruitful.  The mission, in several ways, was parallel to the mission in the Battle of Mogadishu as told in the book, Black Hawk Down. Both missions had a target where helicopters would drop military to the site, they would stop traffic, and then go in after their objective.  This is where the similarities end.  In Mogadishu the mission was to capture high ranking clansmen not prisoners and there were 18 American fatalities and in Iraq there was only one. A video was recently posted showing actual footage of the October 22, Iraq raid on the ISIS compound.  Each of the commandos were wearing helmets outfitted with video, lights, and microphones. Direct communication with the command center and each other is imperative; especially when it is dark and loud. A lack of communication was a central theme running throughout the mission in Mogadishu. If each member of the Delta and Rangers were wearing these types of helmets, the outcome would have been much different. However, it is a far cry better than it was 180 years ago.

In times of an emergency or distress, without a way to communicate your needs, one is left to their own devices. When in a group dynamic, each person’s life is dependent on their ability to communicate with each member of the group. This was extremely difficult back before the days of electricity.  Intelligence gathering was not drones or satellite photos it was one man on a horse watching opposing troop movements and then reporting back to commanding officers.  It was more like the information uphill climb than the superhighway it is today.

Thanks to a few ingenious inventions, communicating was difficult but possible.  The telegraph began to be used in 1835-36.  The military ran wires where they could communicate with their headquarters.  A man by the name of Thaddeus Lowe had figured out a way to string up a telegraph line to his hot air balloon and report troop movements from 2000 feet in the air then relayed it to a telegraph officer who was with him in the balloon and he transmitted it to the ground via Morse code.  This was probably as cumbersome as it was for the airplane piolets in Mogadishu.  They got the intel then relayed it to the command center, the command center then relayed it to the convoy, by then it was usually too late to be of value.  In fact, it was usually counterproductive to the mission.

Communication is a two way process, the giving and receiving of information.  If understanding is not achieved on either side of the processes then communication was not successful.  You have to make yourself understood and you have to seek to understand others.