Aslaug's Axe Shed

You know, sometimes, people forget the strangest things.

Their spouse’s birthday (hazardous, but surprisingly frequent), where they put their car-keys (stressful and potentially bad for your employment status depending on your boss) or how much money they ACTUALLY make each month (typical for men visiting car-dealerships or women in a jewelers’ store).

Sometimes, people forget important things too.

Really important things.

Like … say, the deaths or suffering of 39 million human beings.

This is about war. It’s about remembering something tragic, something stupid and something ultimately completely unavoidable.

It’s about the First World War.

When I was a kid in school, what we were taught about WWI can roughly be boiled down to:

“There was a war called the First World War. It lasted from 1914 to 1918. Denmark was neutral. England and France won. Austria-Hungary and Germany lost. Russia had a communist revolution. Austria-Hungary was divided into many different states. Germany was subjected to peace-terms so harsh that it contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War, which we are going to spend the next four weeks learning about.”

The end. Finito. Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!

I didn’t really understand this when it happened. I mean, if it was big enough and nasty enough to be called a “World War” it obviously had to be PRETTY damned significant. So I remember asking my teachers for a bit more information. What I got was a lot of “Duuuuh”‘s and some rather blank facial expressions.

None of them knew anything. They could quote the text-books on WWII chapter and verse, but they knew -zilch- about the war that precipitated it.

I remember being a bit disappointed but hey, I was just a kid and soon we were hearing about occupation and resistance-movements and evil nazis and heroic Englishmen and night bombers over Germany … and … so … on, and World War One was, momentarily forgotten.

Then I got a computer. First I had … *drum solo here please* a Commodore 64! This was the good ol’e breadbox, that a lot of people probably remember with great, great fondness, myself included. Later, when I got a bit older and more sophisticated, I got … *bigger drumsolo* an Amiga 500!!

Woooow! And I even got the much coveted Ram-expansion so I had one kilobyte of memory in this machine. I was THE coolest cat on the block, I swear.

Then … at some point … I got a game called “Wings”. I don’t know if any of you ever heard of it or played it, but “Wings” is a true, -true- classic of its genre. It was a WWI flyer-game, where you controlled a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps as he took part in the fight against the Central Powers. From the first days of training, over missions including bombing, strafing, balloon busting and, of course, the much anticipated dog-fighting missions where one’s tally might rise higher than even that of Manfred von Richthoven if one was careful. It was a captivating game that kept me in front of the computer for untold hours, clutching a joystick as I bucked and jinxed left and right to avoid enemy fighters.

The graphics, by today’s standards, were ultra-primitive, but the gameplay would hold up to this day. It was simple and easy … and the most important part of it was BETWEEN each mission, where the character one played would write something in his journal.

Something about the war in which he fought.

I was totally, totally captivated. For the first time, I read names like Guynemmer, Fonck, Rickenbacker and others. I read about places like the Marne, Arras, Somme, Verdun …

I read about the infamous Focker Scourge and learned to DREAD those damned Eindeckers that just came at you in such horrible numbers.

I saw names on a blackboard of famous pilots as their tallies rose, week by week … until finally, one by one, inevitably, the names got slashed by a white line.

Dead.

Shot down.

Immelmann, Bölcke, McCudden, Mannock, Voss …

It was just a stupid computer-game, but sometimes, it takes as little as that to spark an interest. I decided as I finished the final mission, after shooting down my last enemy, as he “Rose towards me like a knight of old, determined to do battle” as the game said on the loading screen, that this was a war I had to learn more about. I was fifteen or sixteen years old and I thought, like all kids of that age that I was just about the cleverest human being to ever walk the earth, and here was this world I had NEVER heard about before.

Places and people …

I didn’t have much luck. Most books on the subject were on an academic level a bit above what I could really grasp at that time, but I persevered and read what I COULD find. Later, I read books written by adults for adults …

How many people do you guys really think would recognize names like Arras or Ypres? Like Chemin des Dames, like Coronel, Tsingtao, the Marsurian Lakes, Tannenberg or Carporetto?

Some people might nod vaguely, saying “Yeah wait … I think I heard about that somewhere”. Most wouldn’t have a clue. A few more people might recognize places like Verdun, Galipoli, Passchendaele or the Somme, but many would still simply shrug and go “Nah, never heard of it” or even say “What’s it to me? Ancient fucking history.”

But hundreds of thousands of brave men died for idiotic ideals in those places. Often alone, in bomb- or grenade-craters, wounded, slowly bleeding to death or choking on the after-effects of poison gas.

The Hell that was Ypres is all but forgotten. The slaughterbench of Verdun, where German general Falkenhein tried to “bleed France white” in a battle that cost over seven hundred thousand men their lives.

Look at that number. 700,000 people. Lives snuffed out.

And today … few remember.

Or care.

Everyone has seen a dozen movies about WWII. Maybe many times that. Serials, books, comics … about the Second World War.

But the first?

“There was a war called the First World War. It lasted from 1914 to 1918. Denmark was neutral. England and France won. Austria-Hungary and Germany lost. Russia had a communist revolution …”

The end. Finito. Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!

I know I’m a geek, and unashamedly so, but something inside me twists into a knot at the thought of all those people who, almost a hundred years ago now, marched off singing “Rule Britannia”, “La Marseillaise”, “God Save the Tsar” or “das Deutschlandlied”, believing they would be “home by Christmas” …

It breaks my heart, and I am not even trying to exaggerate or be needlessly melodramatic by saying that. It breaks my heart, because these men died in a war that was unavoidable … but the result of utter, absolute stupidity.

And that is why I think we want to remember the Second World War, and not the first …

The second time around, the good guys won, because they fought against something dreadful and inhuman. Because Fascism HAD to be stopped. Because Hitler HAD to be put down like the rabid dog he was. Because Mussolini had to be stopped. Because the Japanese militarists like Tojo had to be stopped. That war was understandable. It was the good guys who won and the bad guys who lost. For all its grotesque evils and unfathomable grief … it was, at its essence about good vs. bad, and we, as a race, can understand that.

Nobody really understands the First World War.

Because it was stupid. Because after 1906, it was unavoidable. It was just a matter of time, because nobody could accept not having the biggest dick in the showerroom. Because one man had to prove he was a helluva warrior, despite his withered left arm. Because another man still believed that the world could be ruled by the principles his forebears had set down in the middle ages.

Because people still thought that war was about bold charges across open ground, and capturing enemy territory in swift, decisive actions on land and sea, in great heroic battles, fought by beautifully uniformed ranks of perfect soldiers.

In 1918, the French had long since started calling their soldiers “le Poilu” … “the hairy ones”. It was meant affectionately, but the soldiers hated the word. Their brightly coloured uniforms of red, white and blue had been replaced by blue-gray field uniforms. The English used mud-coloured khaki. The Germans used field gray.

Burning towns littered the easten front. In the west, you can still walk through landscapes to this day, and see the remains of a trench. A moon-cratered landscape of grenade-holes.

Even today, World War One soldiers are still unearthed every year, to be given their final resting places amongst their brothers in arms, in gigantic war cemetaries. To this day … nearly a hundred years later, farmers plow up bones and bits of soldiers equipment, from those who were never found. From those who were “Missing, presumed killed”. Not as many as they used to, fortunately. But … still, every single year to this day.

But the war is forgotten by most people. Because it wasn’t easy to understand. Because it was stupid. Because it wasn’t as simple as good versus evil. Oh sure, the French and the English painted the Kaiser as a monster and not without reason … but they weren’t much better themselves. After the war, Clemenceau, the French premier aptly called “The Tiger”, was adamant that Germany had to be dismantled to such an extent it would never again pose a threat to peace. Bedamned if women and children starved or froze to death. It was NOT his problem.

And the English? Not only didn’t they stop this, they boycotted German goods for years after the war, making the suffering of ordinary people even worse in Germany. In the end, the only way Germany could rise was by making short term, high interest loans in the United States.

An economic upsurge, paid for by loans, financed by an un-regulated financial sector, from their headquarters at Wall Street.

We all know how that ended.

Everyone fought savagely.

It was Hell on Earth.

And today, people don’t even give a shit. In four years, it’s the 100th anniversary for the outbreak of this … the “Great War” … the “War to end all wars”.

We’ll see more books than we’ve seen for a long time, when that time comes. Some good, some bad. We’ll see movies and TV-serials and articles in newspapers. We may even see it last for as much as four years.

Then … the First World War will again be forgotten. And people will look at the Second World War again.

Because it is easier to grasp.

Because it doesn’t remind us that we’ll kill each other not out of evil, not out of a desire to set to right that which should never be allowed to come to pass.

But out of simple, human foolishness.

Thirty nine million people died, were wounded or went missing during World War One.

It is 96 years since that war began, and the number still rises every single year, as more remains of soldiers are unearthed.

And nobody cares.

It makes me feel ashamed.

I’ll finish by a quote, by Paul Baümer in the great, incomparable “Im Westen Nichts Neues”, or “All quiet on the western front” as it is called in English. Paul is a gifted schoolboy who, after graduation, joins the German army. During a battle, he finds himself in a shell-crater, huddling down for dear life, hoping against hope to survive the night. Suddenly, a french soldier jumps into the crater, clearly trying to escape the bombardment as well. He has no idea Paul is there, but Paul panicks and, grabbing his bayonette, stabs the Frenchman to death. Only … it takes hours for the Poilu to die. He lays there, wheezing horribly, slowly expiring, with fear in his eyes … and pain. And Paul, now sobered from the shock, can’t bring himself to actually KILL this suffering man. He can’t, because now that he sees the enemy that close, he realizes the terrible, terrible truth, that the enemy is not simply “the French” or “the English” … but human beings. Like himself. He tries desperately to save the Frenchman, propping up his head and loosening his clothes and even trying to bandage him but it is no use, and at last … the man dies. And Paul is devastated by the knowledge that he has killed another human being.

As he struggles to save the man he, himself, has mortally wounded:

“Stop that! I can’t listen to that. Why do you take so long to die? You’re going to die anyway. No, no. You won’t die. No, no, You won’t die. They’re only little wounds. You’ll get home. You’ll be all right. You’ll get home long before I will. You know I can’t run away. That’s why you accuse me. I tell you I didn’t want to kill you. I tried to keep you alive. If you jumped in here again, I wouldn’t do it… You see, when you jumped in here, you were my enemy — and I was afraid of you. But you’re just a man like me, and I killed you. Forgive me, comrade. Say that for me. Say you forgive me! Oh, no, you’re dead! Only you’re better off than I am — you’re through — they can’t do any more to you now. Oh, God! Why did they do this to us? We only wanted to live, you and I. Why should they send us out to fight each other? If they threw away these rifles and these uniforms, you could be my brother, just like Kat and Albert. You’ll have to forgive me, comrade. I’ll do all I can. I’ll write to your parents. I’ll write to your wife. I’ll write to her. I promise she’ll not want for anything. And I’ll help her, and your parents, too. Only forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me …”

Paul does not survive the war to keep his promise to his dead, French enemy.

Paul is fictional.

39 million people were not.

And it isn’t right … to -forget- them.