Thursday, August 13, 2009

Three British soldiers died in Afghanistan today

Let’s hope some good poetry comes of this, at any rate.

And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall thank their lucky stars they were not there.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My sincere condolences to their families. I imagine the only thing worse than fearing every second of every day that someone will die is getting the news that it's happened.

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David said...

I saw that interview with you. You looked very comfortable before the camera, and the station did a good job of giving the background.

News items like this one inevitably make one think of the 19th century, Kipling, etc. I sometimes wonder how the waiting for the families at home differs nowadays from the waiting for the families in previous times. Now there's instant communication of both good and bad news. They had to wait for written messages - long enough for families who lived in cities, immensely long for those in rural areas. The emotional agony was the same, but the waiting must have been even worse back then.

Anonymous said...

I imagine. On the other hand, because it's possible to have nearly immediate communication now (IMing, for example), people will often expect to hear from someone at a certain time, and when they don't, they worry something has happened (when, really, it's probably just that an unexpected mission came up).

David said...

Interesting point.

My mother, who was from Lithuania, told me a family story about some young man in the family who drafted into the Russian (Imperial) army and stationed in Siberia. The service was for five years, and the trip took six months each way. The six months were on his own time, so he was away from home for six years. He wrote letters home, which of course also took at least six months to reach his family in Lithuania.

I don't think there was any kind of fighting involved. I suppose the troops were stationed there to show the flag in a remote territory. The winters, as he described them, were ghastly, and I imagine that the weather must have killed a few soldiers every year. Which would have meant, in his case, a long time before his family was notified. But as you point out, they weren't expecting to hear anything quickly or often.

Anonymous said...

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David said...

Anonymous, if you're referring to my post or my comments, sure. (I can't speak for anyone else, obviously.) Link back to this post.

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