One hundred years ago,
Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen won his last victory—his 80th—in
the sky above Northern France. The erstwhile cavalry officer had become the most
famous fighter pilot of the war since transferring to the air service in 1915, admired
by combatants and non-combatants on both sides. Even today, kids who barely
know there was a war fought in 1914-1918, would probably have a vague notion of
the man known as The Red Baron, and his Flying Circus.
Because Snoopy. And
Monty Python.
Richthofen and his ilk
must have seemed like true knights-of-the-air to the men who fought
semi-underground in the trenches of the Western Front. Airmen lived in fairly
posh camps behind the lines, so were not generally in danger of artillery fire.
As officers, they were catered to and waited on as befitted their class;
outside of actual sorties, it was almost as though they were at a country house
shooting party, with hot baths and cold Champagne.
In the air, make no
mistake, it was not all cakes and ale; their aircraft were not exactly
precision machines, they had no radio communications, they were on their own,
with little training or support, just the adrenaline surge and the joy stick.
Richthofen was extraordinarily skilled and lucky to survive as long as he did—a
tribute to his gifts as a pilot.
But the luck ran out on
21 April 1918, and he was shot down over Vaux-sur-Somme.
Today’s entry for
National Poetry Month isn’t about Richthofen specifically, or even about World
War I aces. I don’t know of any studies on PTSD for the knights-of- the-air, so
I don’t know how they fared post-war in comparison to the trench-soldiers. Was the
term lack of moral fiber applied to them? Dunno. Their war was fought in short,
intense spurts, not the long, filthy war shared with rats, lice, mud and
decomposing corpses. And their war often ended with the LMF diagnosis, and
looks of disgust followed them the rest of their lives.
No, today’s entry is
from my old comrade Wilfred
Owen, whose war was in those trenches, and who experienced the mental
breakdown he writes of here. He pulls no punches..
(As we continue engaging
in warfare with all the technology at our disposal—because wars are always technological
drivers—we continue to learn more about the aftereffects. Seems that much of
what has been called over the century LMF, battle fatigue, PTSD is undiagnosed
traumatic brain injury. And now that it’s not something that chickenhawks can
dismiss as non-physiological, we may get around to finding treatments that will
reduce the appalling post-combat suicide rate for our military members.)
“Mental Cases”
Who
are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
