The Cost of War

The Manneken Pis. The iconic symbol of Belgium.

As you know, my school had a two week break for Christmas and New Years, so I after spending Christmas in Bethlehem (!!!), I had the awesome opportunity to travel in Belgium. One of the other YAGM volunteers, Courtney, has family in Belgium so we stayed with them and traveled around Belgium. Courtney's relatives live in Iepers on the Northwest corner of Belgium. Before I started researching Belgium, I knew almost nothing about it. It's a quirky and amazing place. You know a country is great when 1. they go without a government for a year and a half and do just fine, 2. their iconic symbol is of a little boy urinating into a fountain (the Manneken Pis is in Brussels, the capital. It's literally a statue of a boy peeing. Weird.) and 3. they have an entire museum dedicated to chocolate (WIN!).

Our trip was full of adventures exploring castles, old churches and eating excellent cheese and chocolate. However, our trip was also full of visiting cemeteries. As I learned when I started reading up on Belgium, most of the trench warfare in WWI took place on a line going right through Belgium. Trench warfare is a nasty thing. Hundreds of soldiers die to move the line a few feet over. The very next day, even more die as it gets moved back. For four years the trenches barely moved as young men were slaughtered and the countryside razed to the ground. Iepers in particular was completely demolished by the fighting.

In this image you can see the City Hall before WWI (left) right after WWI (middle) and as it has been rebuilt today (right). The damage is astonishing.

Since all of the "old stuff" in Iepers was destroyed during WWI, tourism there now centers on cemetery tourism. Visitors pay homage to the many lost and look for the names of predecessors who died there. This can be quite the daunting task since literally thousands and thousands of men died there during those four years. The most heart-wrenching part of walking through all those cemeteries is reading how old the soldiers were. Most were 18, 19, 20 maybe 21 years old. Not infrequently, young men enlisted under a false name so that they could fight even younger than the legal age. The youngest known soldier who died was 14 years old. Literally an entire generation of young men lost and young women made widows. Heavy boots.

Why must youth fight and die when their (often much older and "wiser") leaders decide to go to war? I understand that our young men make good soldiers. They think they are immortal making them reckless in battle, they enjoy the adventure, they are strong and nimble. Perhaps most importantly, you can teach them to do whatever you tell them to and they will actually do it. But if you think about it, it is asking a lot of really young men and sometimes women.

In Israel there is compulsory military service for everyone. It consists of three years for men and just under two years for women, most often served right after they finish high school. Palestine likewise employs very young men in their forces. These facts mean that the vast majority of soldiers I see are even younger than me. (Think about that for a moment...) I deeply respect those who choose to join the military and the sacrifices they make, but I question the system itself, whereby the young implement, and pay for, the decisions of their elders.

In the book Mornings in Jenin, Susan Abulhawa writes about a young Israeli soldier from the viewpoint of an older Palestinian woman, "The power he holds over life is a staggering burden for so young a man...I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power" (305-306). Making a decision about the life, health and/or death of another human being is a staggering burden for anyone, but especially someone who is still developing mentally, socially and emotionally.

The scars that remain from military service are not always physical ones. One need only consider the instances of PTSD, depression and anxiety amongst military veterans to suspect that humans are perhaps not well-suited to the destruction of modern military. Even if they survive combat, soldiers are likely to be wounded by their experiences.

Unfortunately I do not know how to make this system better since it is the way it is for a lot of complicated reasons. I do hope that our leaders really and truly consider the costs paid by our youth when implementing any sort of military presence. The real cost of war may not always be monetary.