Prev: [GZG] [GZG Fiction] Breakout from the Arda Next: RE: [GZG] [DS/SG] New markers from Litko Aero

[GZG] [GZG Fiction] All Grown Up

From: <Beth.Fulton@c...>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 08:07:02 +1100
Subject: [GZG] [GZG Fiction] All Grown Up

Our Boys, All Grown Up
 
New Guardian Times, Margaritifer Sector, September 2nd 2196
 
While the Arda Campaign goes on unabated, I thought a more personal note
might set the scene for what is to come over the next few months. For
those who have friends or loved ones on the Line, I guess you wonder if
you'd sense any change in them should you finally get a live vid post
rather than a flat letter. As some one who has been to and from the
frontline of human operation over the last couple of years I would say
yes, quite definitely. 
 
The first and most vivid change that would strike you is the casual and
work-a-day manner in which they now talk about killing. This is a
transition that most veterans in long ground wars make, but the
psychological transition seems to have been quicker and more complete
thanks to the alien nature of the foe. With the various forms that
humans now come in, with and without major gene and cybernetic
enhancement, there was some question as to whether in a face-to-face
confrontation humanity would see Krak any different to other sentients.
Practically though there has been relatively little resistance in the
switch from the normal belief that sentience is sacrosanct to the
professional outlook of killing is a craft without moral obstacle. In
large part this seems to have been facilitated by the media reporting of
the bloody transmissions from the captured colony worlds and the gory
aftermath of battles to date. The mutilated corpses and apparent lack of
respect for the human dead amongst the Krak making it all to easy to see
them as monsters in appearance and nature. 
 
What has struck me the most is that I am coming to share this new
attitude. There are many reports of generations of previous reporters
and non-combatants not sharing this transition, of the act of causing
another's death remaining taboo for them. I share no such qualm. I think
it is because the Krak makes no distinction regarding non-combatants; my
life is not only peripherally, but directly in danger so I have come to
think of killing in personal terms. It's not so much that you're
fighting for your people, your species, it's that you're fighting for
your life. Your blood comes up, and ending that enemy in whatever way
works best becomes a profession as sensible as farming, teaching or
writing.
 
Killing individually or in vast numbers is almost a secondary
consideration. It comes down to wanting to see the alien horror overrun,
silenced, mangled, butchered, exterminated. It is no longer the
terrible, if almost academic, desire for the war to be over that all
those far from the front line share. On the Line everyone, combatant or
not, wants it over by the physical process of destroying as many Krak as
it takes to end it, even if that's every last one of the murdering
brutes. This is a state of being at war that those who are not on the
Line can not achieve no matter how hard they work at it. Nothing can
make one into a complete soldier, a veteran soldier, except hard fought
battle experience. 
 
Nevertheless it has taken more than a year of living on the Line and now
of being thigh deep in the Arda campaign, with its wholesale death and
vile destruction, for me to realise to my core how real and how awful
this war is. It is also somewhat disconcerting to see what this does to
one's emotions, making some crust over when it comes to the tangibles of
war. For instance, I still find a lump forming in my throat and a
tightness in my gut whenever I look on a row of fresh graves. Yet I can
look on as many mutilated bodies without flinching. 
 
As the campaign winds into full swing more and more replacement units
come into action. Not all excel immediately, admirably their commanders
not only admit it they don't try to alibi it. This is because while the
troops are green the commanders aren't; they are not worried as they
know there is no lack of bravery, only a lack of experience. They all
know these troops will rise to meet the challenge, do better next time -
except for those poor souls for whom there will not be a next time. 
 
I spoke to one of the high-up NAC officer's this morning. One of those
aristocratic leaders whose family has been educated at Eton for
centuries and commanding troops for over a thousand years. A quiet fifty
something, with an easy but constrained smile, greying blonde hair
almost silver at the temples and flint hard blue eyes. He had been over
the ground taken in the opening days of the offensive, had found our
dead lying in vehicles, amongst anything that could pass for cover, in
scrapes and hastily constructed positions, their dead hands still
grasping their weapons in firing positions. He repeatedly remarked, in a
hushed, but admiring and proud tone "Brave, so bloody brave. Couldn't
ask more. Couldn't ask more"  

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l

Prev: [GZG] [GZG Fiction] Breakout from the Arda Next: RE: [GZG] [DS/SG] New markers from Litko Aero