Paul Fussell and the Thin Red Line of War Essay

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The Real WarFussell notes well that “the real war was tragic and ironic beyond the power of any literary or philosophic analysis to suggest”—mainly because it was not the “Good” War that the propagandists made it out to be for America. America identified itself as the leading power—yet its technology lagged behind the Germans. It relied on sweetening of the war, through songs and films like South Pacific, to turn it into something that Americans could celebrate. But the defining characteristics of “real war” according to Fussell are that it is not pretty, people suffer and suffer badly, and there is no real happy ending or thing to celebrate. Fussell considers it necessary to define it in this manner because we must understand reality if we are to engage with reality—and the reality of war is that it is not a Hollywood musical. War is war; it tears limb from limb; it tears apart homes and communities; it alters irrevocably the futures of all involved; it can be more destructive than any stage 4 hurricane or monster of a tornado. War is slaughter; and, yes, there may be acts of courage and nobility that shine through in war—but war itself is a horrifying thing, and that reality needs to be understood.Real war is gruesome. Fussell goes into great detail to explain just how gruesome it can get—from walking “for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh” to the destruction of Hiroshima to the bombing of Dresden and so many more examples that it becomes almost sickly repetitive. The point is that America was able to celebrate WW2 as the “good” war because it saw none of the actual horrors. American ignorance was preserved by censored images and books about the war. Fussell points out that even in the “popular collections of photographs, like Collier\'s Photographic History of World War ll, Ronald Heiferman\'s World War II, A.J.P. Taylor\'s History of World War II, and Charles Herridge\'s Pictorial History of World War II” there was no indication of the kind of horrific dismemberment that soldiers routinely encounter in war. Everything was more or less sanitized. Americans could see only swagger, good cheer, confidence, and stout-heartedness in the images of the war: a blown off face; a missing leg; a mutilated torso; a pile of guts; bodies floating in the sea; body parts blown to kingdom come—those could not be shown. Showing that would make war seem too real, too ugly, too hideous. It could cause people to second guess the purpose, the objective, the mission—whether it was actually really worth it. And for a country that has been in perpetual war mode for more than a century, such a presentation simply cannot be allowed.

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Why is it necessary to define war in real terms? Because it is a real problem. War is not a solution—it is a punishment, a plague, a perpetual evil that seems impossible to get rid of in our current age. Yet, we never see it in media the way…

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…about war is the first step to peace.That I think is the ultimate point of Fussell’s article and it is a noble one. It is one worth thinking about long and hard. Real war needs to be defined in real terms because it is a real problem with real consequences that can be counted just as the number of severed heads, missing limbs, lives lost, homes destroyed, generations set back can all be measured. Fussell wrote that article in 1989. Just imagine what he would have to say if he were looking at the state of things today in 2024. I can only think he would become so despondent he would not even be able to set pen to paper to put his thoughts into words. I have to leave with this image because it is one I have never forgotten: the final scene of Malick’s Thin Red Line, when all the soldiers are back aboard the ship, leaving the shore. They all stare out as the camera moves from one face to the next; each soldier glances momentarily at the camera before looking away, acknowledging the viewer—but saying nothing. Indeed, not one has a thing to say. After what they have been through, they do not know what to say. They are utterly silent. Their eyes look off; each one with a thousand yard stare, seeing something beyond the horizon that no one can account for. That is the reality of the aftermath of war......

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