[lit-ideas] Re: A Response to Mike Geary and Mirembe Nantongo
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 20:40:08 -0700
Faith is more complex yet.
I hope one day to meet and disabuse a descendant of the man who designed the
First World War poster, "Daddy, what did *you* do in the Great War?"
I'm fine with the imagined boy, minding his own business, playing with
bearskin-cap'd soldiers and a Napoleon cannon, expressing no opinion...
but the busybody daughter, her finger on her book's picture page,
a tumor of ribbon puffing her hair,
the overbite calling attention to her strong chin,
turns to Dad and says, "How'd you like to get slaughtered?"
It's unbelievable.
His is the classic pose photographers grab when they want to "disguise" a
weak chin. I bet the Dad was thinking he might look thoughtful,
but actually he's looking merely awful.
The daughter seems fascinated by her Dad's knuckles.
"My," she'd think if there were a balloon, "what big uns.
Perfect for biffing the Hun!"
He's wondering just who this clean-knee'd person on his lap really is and
whether, somewhere, she has, possibly clutched in the hand that holds the
words side of the volume, some flower or feather of cowardice.
A young man with two kids at home and a hint of balding's retreat up around
the temples did, of course, have to take seriously the question of how fit
he should plead for being stitched up by German machine gunners,
say on the first day of the Somme.
All the man in the print really needs for a clue to his future,
is to look down and see where his son has put one of the soldiers:
right in front of the cannon's barrel.
"Boom," you think, "half a soldier. It's a hint, Dad!" But no.
You can see him fevering the thing through,
a struggle that has done a Moses on his hair do.
My father defended the Physics building of Edinburgh University during the
Second, not-so-great war. He was given a helmet and a rifle and told to go
up on the roof in case of air raids and spies.
He was not awarded ammunition.
For morale purposes, they explained,
those who failed exams would be given first class tickets to the infantry.
My friend's father, I learned this week, was a student long before that war.
He got his Ph.D. in sociology during the great depression and, having worked
on the census, took a civilian job in military intelligence before Pearl
Harbor. Promoted to officer status, he set to work to make sense
statistically of morale.
I imagine some grunt at Anzio or the Bulge getting a questionnaire from him,
asking whether, on a scale of one through five, he felt happy with dinner.
The man went on to great things though--
he was that Framingham lad--
won a job in Michigan, bore a son,
who is as gentle as Finns come,
and mostly believes in dear old dad.
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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