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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The more things change
News of German soldiers in Afghanistan:
Photographs of German soldiers posing with a human skull in Afghanistan triggered outrage in Germany today and cast a shadow over government plans to raise its military profile worldwide.
The Bild newspaper, printed a close-up of an unidentified soldier smiling and holding up a skull. Under the headline “German soldiers desecrate the dead”, other photos showed the skull balanced on a jeep and a soldier holding the skull next to his exposed penis.
I know this will sound trite, but this is what war does to some of those who fight. It's not new and it's not unique. Consider this assessment in Paul Fussell's Wartime:
Then dragged [the skull] behind his ship for many days and finally scrubbed it thoroughly with lye and had a perfect souvenir. Dealing that way with the skull of a German or Italian, that is, "a white man," would be clearly inappropriate, perhaps sacrilegious. This treatment of Japanese corpses as if they were animal became so flagrant as early as September, 1942, that the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet ordered that "No part of the enemy's body may be used as a souvenir. Unit Commanders will take stern disciplinary action..."
War is a dehumanizing force that can scar all those drawn near.
