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BACK | EDUCATION HOME |
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PART3: The Second World War |
A Front Randall Jarrell Fog over the base: the beams ranging |
INDEX the first world war
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INFORMATION
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HISTORY Here are some of Randall Jarrell's comments on life in the army: 1945: 'The general atmosphere was very prison-campish. What I minded most was physical pain and exhaustion. Beside all the training and physical labour, we did two hours a day of running, duck-walking [walking crouched with bent knees], crawling on our stomachs, and inventive callisthenics [exercises to develop muscles] - and anything else our PT sergeant could think of....The atmosphere was of lying, meaningless brutality and officiousness.' Pearl Harbor (an American naval base in Hawaii) was bombed by Japanese planes in December 1941, and the USA joined the Second World War as a result. The Japanese occupied large areas of southern Asia in 1941 and 1942, but were pushed back during 1943-5. They gained a reputation for brutal treatment of prisoners. In 1945 the USA dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese towns, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing many thousands.
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IDEAS This 'film' is about just one tragedy among many. It was the personal tragedy, real and terrible, for those in the plane that crashes and fills the foggy air with the sound and glow of its explosion. With whom does the poem encourage us to share the feelings of tension and anxiety? Any air-crew faces the risk of bad weather. But bomber crews in war face other dangers. One danger, of course, is being hit by anti-aircraft fire. There is something else: if it wasn't wartime they would probably never have set out on a raid in the first place. They are in danger not only from the war but because of the war. Lives are risked - and lost - tragically, pointlessly, and under orders. The 20th century introduced a new weapon for killing not just one soldier but many people - including civilians. The aircraft-carried bomb distances the killer from the killed even further - so far that the victims often aren't even visible to the bomber. At that range, it's easy to forget that they are human beings - many of them not fighters in an opposing army, but innocent civilian bystanders. In war, a great callousness becomes possible. It's not confined to the military, either. This was the century in which one American politician could say of Pacific islanders at risk from missile tests 'There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?' and another, of thousands of Iraqi children dying as a result of hostilities, 'It's a price worth paying'.
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