After reading “A March in the Ranks Hard-prest and the Road Unknown” I felt a strong connection to today’s events with the many conflicts occurring all over the world, concerning the United States and many other countries.
Many of these countries are unknown to the people being sent to them to fight. They have never had to live in that type of climate and all of the sudden they are trained to live there for years at a time, following many “roads unknown”. Along with the unknown aspect, the fact that this narrator is observing crowds, people, all injured and fighting, trying to sleep when they can, dying all around him, its all very reminiscent of what’s going on, soldiers are dying everyday in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places. Soldiers are also watching their comrades die, watching the enemy die, not knowing if they deserved to die or not, watching people they don’t even know die, and just continuing on. There is hardly a break for fighting soldiers, whenever they find a moment of rest, the time comes again to “fall in” and march out again, fighting the “good fight” and defending their country. There are also many soldiers fighting who have just barely reached the age where they are able to fight, or maybe even younger, “mere lads” in the warrior world and they are out fighting and dying. They fight their ways through, “wild red flame, and clouds of smoke” fighting to see each other and the people they are fighting. They are “ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks” on and on everyday, waiting for the conflict to end. They are on the “unknown road still marching”.
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3 comments:
I agree with what you said. I do not think that the army, and other military entities, teach their soldiers about the culture and countries that they are being sent to, and I think they do that on purpose. It leaves out the human part of killing someone else. I think it's much easier to murder someone who you don't know anything about, than killing someone who you know has a mother waiting at home. I forgot who wrote it, but there is a short story about World War I where this man is stuck down in a hole with a man whom he has just shot, and he has to stay down there while the man dies. By the time the injured man dies, the other guy has realized the human qualities that he has destroyed, and I believe vows to not kill again. Wish I remembered the title of it, but oh well.
I like your suggestion that the darkness is metaphorical as well as literal, Sam. That emphasis on "unknown" is at the core of the poem but also of contemporary experiences of war, as you say.
Kate, if you think of the name of that story, please post it.
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