Abstract
It is no mystery that war means loss for all parties. No one can be called a winner because to be called so one must make sacrifices to gain the opponent’s surrender. The war “game,” as Donald A. Wells believes,
is a monstrous charade or a gigantic chess gambit which we have played for so long that, like the Roman attitude toward the arena, we have forgotten that the players are persons.(2)
The whole “moral fabric”(3) of a nation is twisted to make it believe that murder is heroism. All the teaching that has been dedicated to inspiring respect to other human beings vanishes during wars. Instead, another “code of ethics” (4) is introduced which simply accepts war as “an activity involving nobility or a rugged recklessness\"(5) differentiating between “organized murder” (which is war) and “individual murder, which is socially taboo.”(6) The bloodshed, suffering, and horror of wars have awakened poets to responsibility.(7) If Yeats called it “a terrible beauty,”(8) William Sherman (1820-1891) called it “hell” as he comments: “Its glory is all moonshine … War is hell.”(9) Men would argue in a nauseating way though they were believed to be tough. In fact, in spite of all the sordid description of life in the trenches (provided by men), women had proved to have the ‘guts’ for it. A soldier woman-writer, who was the first female to join World War I in Russia, had to endure much of men’s misbehaviour(10) than to endure war itself. However, she, along with her Death Battalion, faced the fact that men were going to abandon them in the field and, therefore, they decided to go forward without their ‘brothers-in-arms’:
The line was arranged that men and women alternate, a girl being flanked by two men.
We decided to advance in order to shame men, having arrived at the conclusion that they would not let us perish in No Man’s Land.(11)
Surprisingly, this incident had actually happened. The media, until this day, had mislead millions of people into believing that women had nothing to do with war. Tangible evidence proved that women led the war. Botchkareva was only one of many:
“Ha, ha! Women and officers will fight!” they railed.
“They are faking, whoever saw officers go over the top like soldiers, with riffles in hand?”
“Just watch those women run!” joked a fellow, to the merriment of a chorus of voices.
We gritted our teeth in fury but did not reply. Our hope was still in these men. We stuck to the belief that they would not follow us and, therefore, avoided alienating them.
At last the signal was given. We crossed ourselves and, hugging our riffles, leaped out of the trenches …. We moved forward against a withering fire of machine guns and artillery, my brave girls … marching steadily against the hail of bullets.(12)
It was women who made it happen!
is a monstrous charade or a gigantic chess gambit which we have played for so long that, like the Roman attitude toward the arena, we have forgotten that the players are persons.(2)
The whole “moral fabric”(3) of a nation is twisted to make it believe that murder is heroism. All the teaching that has been dedicated to inspiring respect to other human beings vanishes during wars. Instead, another “code of ethics” (4) is introduced which simply accepts war as “an activity involving nobility or a rugged recklessness\"(5) differentiating between “organized murder” (which is war) and “individual murder, which is socially taboo.”(6) The bloodshed, suffering, and horror of wars have awakened poets to responsibility.(7) If Yeats called it “a terrible beauty,”(8) William Sherman (1820-1891) called it “hell” as he comments: “Its glory is all moonshine … War is hell.”(9) Men would argue in a nauseating way though they were believed to be tough. In fact, in spite of all the sordid description of life in the trenches (provided by men), women had proved to have the ‘guts’ for it. A soldier woman-writer, who was the first female to join World War I in Russia, had to endure much of men’s misbehaviour(10) than to endure war itself. However, she, along with her Death Battalion, faced the fact that men were going to abandon them in the field and, therefore, they decided to go forward without their ‘brothers-in-arms’:
The line was arranged that men and women alternate, a girl being flanked by two men.
We decided to advance in order to shame men, having arrived at the conclusion that they would not let us perish in No Man’s Land.(11)
Surprisingly, this incident had actually happened. The media, until this day, had mislead millions of people into believing that women had nothing to do with war. Tangible evidence proved that women led the war. Botchkareva was only one of many:
“Ha, ha! Women and officers will fight!” they railed.
“They are faking, whoever saw officers go over the top like soldiers, with riffles in hand?”
“Just watch those women run!” joked a fellow, to the merriment of a chorus of voices.
We gritted our teeth in fury but did not reply. Our hope was still in these men. We stuck to the belief that they would not follow us and, therefore, avoided alienating them.
At last the signal was given. We crossed ourselves and, hugging our riffles, leaped out of the trenches …. We moved forward against a withering fire of machine guns and artillery, my brave girls … marching steadily against the hail of bullets.(12)
It was women who made it happen!