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Callaloo 24.1 (2001) 71-76



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Stars and Bars
A Confederate Collage

George Garrett


"Though black hostility to Confederate totems lay relatively dormant for two decades after the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s, it resurfaced in the mid-1980s and has escalated ever since."

--Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

A cool, sun-rinsed early afternoon in London at the end of this past summer. My wife and I are strolling along Birdcage Walk, coming back from a visit to the National Portrait Gallery. Near Buckingham Palace I notice the black bearskin hats and scarlet coats of the Old Guard, just relieved by the daily Changing of the Guard and coming home to Wellington Barracks. Even at the tag end of this ancient ceremony, with nobody much watching now, the Guards--perfectly aligned and dressed, arms swinging precisely together, the little bayonets on their formidable assault rifles glinting, shiny black hobnailed boots hitting the pavement exactly together--look wonderful, justly the exemplary model for all the marching soldiers in the world.

Once upon a time a soldier myself, I pause and watch in silent awe as the Guard swings into position in front of the Barracks. Before they are dismissed from duty, there is one more detail, a vital one, to take care of. Escorts to the Colors (the regimental battle flag) form up and, while the rest of the Guard presents arms in salute, they quick-march to a doorway where the Colors are formally handed over to their counterparts on interior guard duty in the Barracks.

For more than a thousand years, until the early 20th century (and do not forget the Iwo Jima Memorial of the Marine Corps or fail to note that a book about the six men who raised the flag in Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, has been high on the New York Times bestseller list for months), battle flags served various practical purposes in combat even as they were profoundly symbolic, representing not a nation and not any cause, but the identity and honor of a military unit. To carry the flag under fire was a high (if highly dangerous) honor; to guard it was an almost sacred duty; to capture it from an enemy was a great triumph.

I once served in an old cavalry regiment where some Confederate battle flags, taken in battle, were on display at headquarters. In Salisbury once I visited the museum of a defunct British regiment, one which (never mind the outcome of the war) had won major victories against my ancestors in the American Revolution and now [End Page 71] had the battle flags to show for it. In the end the Americans won that war. But the British regiment from Wiltshire had won its battles and brought home the proof of it.

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The topic--the Confederate battle flag and what it may mean to others and myself--is these days as delicate and dangerous (and proverbial) as a footpath through a mine field. To be walked with greatest care, on tiptoe as it were. To be talked about, yes, but with tact--that is, with an awareness of the feelings of others and allowing for the validity of some or all of those feelings even when one does not, cannot, share all of them without some serious reservations. One has to be honest and open in order to expect the same integrity from others. To be less than that, though perhaps typical in and of our hypocritical times, would be, among other things, simply condescending. Would be to ratify the already awkward situation in which, all too often and for all kinds of dubious reasons, we do not talk seriously to each other about any number of things which seriously matter to us. Would be to deny, if only tacitly, that there are many things at once unthinkable and unspeakable at the concealed and bitter heart of our social life.

Any survivor of the savage 20th century is familiar with accepting the unacceptable, thinking the unthinkable, saying out loud what others may deem to be unspeakable...

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