So Simple and Clear Cut

Ditmann | So Simple and Clear Cut Laurent Ditmann Spelman College So Simple and Clear Cut Paul Fussell, ed. Doing Battle: The Making ofa Skeptic Little, Brown, 1996. (310 pages, $24.95) Readers ofStendhal remember that his Fabrice, eager to experience the romantic thrills ofwar, chooses to follow a French cavalry troop through the confusion of the Waterloo battlefield. Trying to make sense of the onslaught ofsensations and ideas he faces, Fabrice asks one of the soldiers whether this is indeed a battle, to which the weary hussar responds : " Un peu." This quizzical answer materializes the difficulty of talking about modern war: beyond theory, philosophy, strategy, and other "intellectual" discourses, war appears above all as neither this nor that. It asserts itself as a supreme entity that dwarfs human essence and defies understanding , destroying one's capacity for reason and leaving the individual, though in most direct contact with history in action and motion, without any kind ofdefinitive answer on anything. Possibly the most intense of all human experiences , it forces social groups and individual alike to confront —and concede defeat to—chaos and mortality, while leaving survivors, in a way, speechless. Societies, intolerant ofambiguity, gloss over this silence. Cultural celebrations ofwar through ritual or text, from ancient epics to modern state commemorations, fulfill no other purpose than to ward offdeath through the assignment of meaning to the dead for the benefice of the living. In this respect , the many ways in which World War II has been memorialized , especially around the 50th anniversary ofits conclusion, are exemplary. Historians and politicians alike expatiated at great length on the "Good War," easily forgetting that Stud Terkel's famous use of the word was mosdy ironic. As ifa sort ofstatute oflimitation ofmemory had been reached, all searched for a neat and convenient closure, a stabilization ofmeaning, a sense ofhealing and reconciliation. In the United States, World War II veterans were feted as living heroes and very much taken for granted in the sense that we chose to look at them as characters or extras in a pacified story—as opposed to creatures offlesh and blood. Yet nothing in war should be so simple and clear cut, especially when it comes to 20th century wars and their cultural aftermath, as astutely demonstrated by Samuel Hynes in his TAe Soldier's Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (1997). Hynes reminds us that no matter what the individual's experience ofwar has been, its narration and memorialization remain highly problematic processes. No matter what is said about war, it is only un peu. This reviewer assumes that Paul Fussell, author of the somber and disturbingly sincere Doing Battle: The Making ofa Skeptic, would not disagree with this point. Limiting the discussion ofWorld War II, for America, to victory, parades and placated remembrance, leaves immense areas ofsuffering, death, failure, and other unromantic notions unexplored and unexpressed. As far as the unresolved and largely unresolvable aspects ofwar are concerned, Fussell still has to get even in a way that many will find almost unacceptable (this reviewer remembers a scholarly conference where one participant referred to Fussell's "mean-spirited" Thank God for the Atom Bomb). The author of The Great War and Modern Memory and Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, probably two ofthe best books ever written on the culture of war, Fussell is also a combat veteran ofthe European Theater ofOperation. A second lieutenant in the 410th Infantry Regiment (103rd Infantry Division), he participated in the liberation of Eastern France during which he was seriously wounded. Fifty years later, "PF" still cannot begin to comprehend this injury in all its historical, metaphysical, and personal implications. He simply wishes to show his readers how one goes on after such an experience and how culture, though by no means an antidote to the evil ofwar, can be an individual's best hope to make some limited sense out of it all. Readers of this marvelous book should not expect a military history of the Battle ofAlsace, preferring on this topic the 1993 oral history collection edited by Richard M. Stannard, Infantry: An Oral History ofan American Infantry Battalion, which deals with the 2nd Battalion of...