Beauty in War
Mn
Monuments | 8 Oct 2007 | 0 Comments | Share this...
In the few tragedies I’ve been a part of, and the ones I’ve seen from a distance, it always seems our best and worst natures become exposed. It always seems to take the most dire of situations for everyone to align and help each other.
From Slaughter House Five - time traveling Billy Pilgrim is a POW with other Americans as they are being taken to Dresden in train cars filled to the brim with sick and dejected American soldiers:
“Even though Billy’s train wasn’t moving, its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was to get off until the final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of blackbread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.
Human beings in there excreted into steel helmets which were passed to the people at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.”
