A Knock at the Door
It is Halloween, and in the spirit of, I indulge the impulse to post a blog entry about it. The plight of homeless people is a grave matter all through the year. On this night the usual rational questioning into the cause and consequences of homelessness surrenders to the irrational. What if the plight of the homeless is fate? Neither a simple human failing, nor victims of circumstances, what if the cause of homelessness were to be a curse?
Real horror is told in a book describing war atrocities at first hand, SOLDIER, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by General Sir Mike Jackson, and which I was just now reading. As told by a life-long professional military man, inured to the reality of war, the General doesn't conceal his personal horror in its pages. He participated in every NATO involvement from the peak years of the Cold War, right up to the occupation of Afghanistan.
Horror is effective propaganda. To be correct, semantically, is to call it what has become familiar to all as terrorism. It plays on fear. It is a bluff, of course, because modern warfare has become legalistic, political, interventionist adventures in non-NATO member state conflicts, or, as in the conflict in Northern Ireland, a civil conflict. In the period covered by the book, I cannot recall one instance of attack upon Britain itself (the nationality of General Jackson).
General Jackson expresses sensitivity for the tribal feeling of aggrieved aggressors. He sees right through the pretensions of identity politics driving conflict. This extra sense of the General's might be questionable tactically, but it makes him acutely sensitive to nuances of diplomatic tact. A wrong word in negotiations can dash hopes of peaceful settlement of a conflict. A suggested improvement on the title of the book therefore might be, “Peacekeeping Soldier.”
It is a case of the war of words and the effect on imaginations. It has that in common with Halloween. What delight children take in looking like walking corpses, monstrosities, and demons from Hell come to demand requital in the form of candy! It makes a reader wonder what effect “trick-or-treat” would have had in the midst of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, both sides based in religion. It would not have been approved as policy.
The comparison with war would be ludicrous but for the “spirit” of Halloween. Therefore, as Halloween celebrations would be woefully out of place in the midst of a war, so the war analogy is an inappropriate comparison with Halloween. And yet, throughout the book, like a cunning genii, General Jackson's instinct for self-interest appears. His thinking can, in a pinch, revert from tactics to insight.
General Jackson's rise through the ranks was sure-footed and rapid. While his humanism is evident in his every word, he said that, to be victorious, one could not dwell on sadness. The army has ways of making light of the danger. His frequent promotion—and consequent farewell—was celebrated by the ranks under his command in imaginative tributes. He describes once being seated on the roof of a “knackered” old car, not running, and towed around for hilarity.
When I read this, I smile, as much for the comic dialect as for the prank. General Jackson repeats the colloquial “knackered” again, later, in a different context. At that point I had to admit to not knowing what, exactly, the definition of “knackered” was. I looked it up. His implication then becomes much more personal. Knackering is a grievous matter—not really something to joke about—as becomes evident in the course of the narrative.
The dictionary advises there are slaughterhouses and there are “knackering yards.” They are not the same. Sick, and otherwise unfit livestock animals for food, are put-down in the knacker's yard (by the knacker). Hides are salvaged, and bone for fertilizer, and who knows what else. As a figure of speech it means marked for destruction. For General Jackson, it is an apt metaphor for the death and destruction he saw in the performance of duty.
Knacker reminds me of a metaphor, certainly derived from the original premise, that a worn-out service animal is “fit for the glue factory.” A carriage horse, for example, a "hack." It horrified me as a child that a horse with a broken leg must be “put down” and, worse, made into glue. After finding out about that, I squinted at my tube of hobby glue. Was that why “Elsie the Cow” was pictured on the label?
Trick or treat, kiddies!
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