They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?- Rudyard Kipling, "Mesopotamia," 1917
Tomas Young, Iraq veteran, profiled by Eugene Richards in The Nation.
Many of the soldiers who return from this war survive injured in veteran hospitals, on edge at home (a former Time magazine Marine of the Year who fired his shotgun at a crowd from his home, "under attack"), on a Delta flight, (where one veteran now has been detained for charging the cockpit door as the flight prepared to land). Magazine stories, soldier’s memoirs, and now, even, breaking nightly news fill some of the answer to how soldier live after Iraq.
Indian cavalry on the march on the flooded Shaiba road, Mesopotamia.
50,000 Indians died during World War I - nearly half or more of them buried across Iraq or north towards Anatolia. Hundreds of thousands returned to India as veterans. With American veterans in mind, the image of an Indian man stepping of a ship in Bombay after his service in Mesopotamia is now filled with thoughts of similar agony. As he wandered down the city streets to arrange transporation northward to the Punjab (the home of a majority of Britain’s Indian recruits), how did he cope with his return? He did not have an airplane cockpit door to charge, or, likely, a shotgun to fire at party-goers outside his suburban home when thoughts of his Iraq war frayed his senses. How did he return home? What did he do?
For the Indian soldiers these were foreign wars, the people back home had only vague ideas of what was happening as majority of the soldiers were from villages. The families back home waited for their return I think some songs were also written on this - one of these was on on the lines ‘ Come back from the wars “lavan” and see the ripening wheat’
To be a soldier was in itself a matter of pride and war was an adventure.
I have a fair idea as my Great Grandfather was in the Afghan Wars and Mesopotamia in with 12 Cav,and grandfather in WW II.
Comment by Randy — October 28, 2007 @ 10:35 pm