The "Soldier's Duty"
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The U.S. Army, on its website, offers the words
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Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage
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to sum up its estimation the responsibilities of the soldier.
(Upon second look, you may notice that these words are capitalized. This does more than just adding emphasis; it also adds personification.)
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The Army continues these themes in the Soldier's Creed:
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I am an American Soldier.
I am a warrior and a member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.
I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier.
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These ideas are older than they may appear. They are not even exclusive to America. For many centuries in the history of the West- through all of its many military conflicts- all European cultures have cultivated an idea of the "soldier's duty."
One finds explicit expression of these values, for instance, in a famous 19th century English poem called "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
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Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
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-"The Charge of the Light Brigade," Lord Alfred Tennyson, 1856
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This notion of military virtue- the soldier's willingness to submit his life to the higher cause of national glory- was in thrall in Germany during and after the First World War.
It was in this climate that Bertolt Brecht, a pacifist (and the author of Mother Courage), parodied the very idea of military virtue in a poem titled "The Legend of the Dead Soldier."
And when the war reached its fifth spring
With no hint of a pause for breath
The soldier did the obvious thing
And died a soldier’s death.
The war, it appeared, was far from done.
The Kaiser said, ‘It’s a crime.
To think my soldier’s dead and gone
Before the proper time.’
The summer spread over the makeshift graves.
The soldier lay ignored
Until one night there came an official
Army medical board.
The board went out to the cemetery
With consecrated spade
And dug up what was left of him
And put him on parade.
The doctors sorted out what they’d found
And kept what they thought would serve
And made their report: ‘He’s physically sound.
He’s simply lost his nerve.’
Straightway they took the soldier off.
The night was soft and warm.
You could tip your helmet back and see
The stars they see at home.
They filled him up with a fiery schnaps
To bring him back to life
Then shoved two nurses into his arms
And his half-naked wife.
The soldier was stinking with decay
So a priest goes on before
To give him incense on his way
That he may stink no more.
In front the band with oom-pah-pah
Intones a rousing march.
The soldier does like the handbook say
And kicks his legs from his arse.
Their arms about him, keeping pace
Two kind first-aid men go
In case he falls in the shit on his face
For that would never do.
They paint his shroud with black-white-red
Of the old imperial flag
With so much colour it covers up
That bloody spattered rag.
Up front a gent in a morning suit
And stuffed-out shirt marched too:
A German determined to do his duty
As Germans always do.
So see them now as, oom-pah-pah
Along the roads they go
And the soldier goes whirling along with them
Like a flake in the driving snow.
The dogs cry out and the horses prance.
The rats squeal on the land.
They’re damned if they’re going to belong to France:
It’s more than flesh can stand.
And when they pass through a village all
The women are moved to tears.
The party salutes; the moon shines full.
The whole lot give three cheers.
With oom-pah-pah and cheerio
And wife and dog and priest
And among them all the soldier himself
Like some poor drunken beast.
And when they pass through a village perhaps
It happens he disappears
For such a crowd comes to join the chaps
With oompah and three cheers. …
In all that dancing, yelling crowd
He disappears from view.
You can only see him from overhead
Which only stars can do.
The stars won’t always be up there.
The dawn is turning red.
But the soldier goes off to a hero’s death
Just like the handbook said.
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-"Legend of the Dead Soldier," Bertolt Brecht, 1918