ICEBREAKER – excerpt

Introduction

It was the bloodiest day in British military history. It was the 1^st of July 1916, in Northern France, at the upper reaches of the river Somme. World War 1 had been raging for two years, but this was to be the deadliest battle of all, with a million men either wounded or killed. By the end of this first day of the Battle of the Somme, 19,240 British troops were killed (including men from Canada, South Africa, and India), mostly mown down by machine gun and artillery fire.

Was there a noble purpose to this? What was the achievement of this horrific sacrifice? It was the first major battle in the war for the British and the first under General Sir Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief of the Western front. His assumption at the commencement of the battle was that most of the opposition would have been killed or badly injured by the extensive shelling of the German trenches just before the mass attack. He was sadly and tragically wrong; the majority of the enemy was ready and waiting for the British advance, with their deadly weapons. The order from Haig was for the British soldiers, after clambering out of their trenches, to walk slowly and not run, so that they would stay in formation. Frankly, running would have been impossible for all apart from the super-fit, as they were carrying heavy loads on their back equal to around half of their body weight! Walking made them easy targets and there’s no need to embellish. The achievement? No more than a few hundred metres of land and the thought that the Germans also had incurred heavy losses.

The result of this was that whole communities across our land lost a generation of young men, a poignant example being Accrington in Lancashire, which created a battalion of ‘pals,’ men who had grown up together and were to die together on a muddy field in a foreign land. Many such battalions were created in other cities and towns. One heavy artillery attack was often enough to destroy a whole village or street of young men, as they walked to their deaths. This is such a pain to write, even though I have no familial connection, it is surely an affront to our common humanity to believe that life can be considered so cheaply.

Human warfare has been with us forever. Intentions never change, just delivery methods, as the growth of technology facilitates the ever-increasing horror of the situation. Those young men who unwittingly exposed their bodies to vicious enemy fire were just fulfilling their part in the game of war, following instructions squeezed out of lofty and unproven strategies formulated by generals driven by overall objectives. These commanders thought in terms of metres gained, villages captured, and enemy killed. The young men who carried out these instructions had no time to think, after all, weren’t they just weaponised flesh-and-blood, just cannon fodder? Any reluctance on their part would have been met by a firing squad, death at the hands of those who were already sending them to death. A bullet was a bullet, regardless of the place of origin!

This ‘game of war’ needs to be evaluated for what it is, even if it sickens us to think of such things. Young men are trained to kill other young men through learning weaponry and understanding the most efficient ways to extinguish a life, whether through slicing at a piece of anatomy or firing lumps of metal at other parts of the body at destructively high velocities. War provides a bloody environment to “legally” facilitate such a sorry scenario and it is curious to think that conflicts that are often initiated by disagreements between “heads of state” can be resolved through the death of those very human beings who, otherwise, would have had their whole lives ahead of them.

Every death of a human being destroys relationships that have often taken a lifetime to grow and the potential relationships that will now never happen. Every battleground casualty is the loss of a husband, a son, a brother, a father, a cousin, or a lifelong friend. It is also the loss of children who will now never be born. On the one hand, we have this human tapestry of precious loving family connections; on the other hand, we have the destructive effect of a lump of lead, or slash of steel, or a fiery chemical inferno, initiated at the whim of a strategy to fulfil a military objective. Two worlds at odds, two worlds intrinsically connected by polar extremes of our human experience.

Is this inevitable, unavoidable, just part of the package, or can we think differently about such things?

So, we have this dichotomy. On the one hand, we are connected through a tapestry of precious loving relationships and on the other we are just disposable assets at the hands of others. We are either living, breathing, vital beings or just tools to be used by others for grand (or nefarious) purposes. That is just an observation, specific to the scenario already painted concerning the ‘theatres of war.’ But there might be more of a principle here than we realise? Let us first focus on the more troubling possibility, highlighted by the events in 1916.

Perhaps we are just military assets, like pawns on a chessboard, at the mercy of those with more independence of action. Perhaps our strength and motor skills are in continual development, to become efficient killing machines, without a moral compass or conscience? This, of course, is not an observation, just an extension of thoughts that may or may not have crossed the mind of General Haig and others as they moved their little pieces on their campaign map. It just seems that the resolving of conflicts between nations is largely determined by how many human beings on each side have been put out of action. Of course, this is nothing new, historically; we just have larger numbers of dead bodies because the growth in our technology has enabled greater destruction.

We can take this further, away from death and mayhem and into our daily lives. To the State, we are a social security number or a National Health number, to banks we are an account number, to Inland Revenue a tax reference number … and so it goes on. Society finds it hard to consider us as individuals, but would rather see us as collections of people, as demographics or as generic groups, so that we can be analysed statistically. Let me put this into plain English:

You hear of 25,000 people dying of hunger every day, but can you imagine what it must be like being one of them? You may be part of a group that is prejudiced against in society, but who gets to hear of your personal story?

There is safety in numbers. We can toss statistics around like confetti, but they always deal with large numbers of people, never individuals. The only way an individual is going to get heard in our society is if they raise their head above the rest, usually because of an act committed by them or against them.

This is how we run our society. It is not a deliberate recent ploy by those in power, it is just how we are as human beings. Unless we catch the eye, we are going to remain as an unheard voice, a blip in the great sea of statistics that feed the decision-making processes for those in control. Yet, like those fallen soldiers, we are fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. We still have a voice within our own circles. It is within family and friends that we usually find an identity. This is where we find ‘Grumpy Gramps’ or ‘weird Uncle Eric’ and any number of others, each earning their designations through a quirkiness of character or through their function within the family network. It is here we find value and respect, or, in some cases, neither. The point is that we are noticed, we find interaction, even if the outcome is not good.

Society has no need of this, it prefers loyalty to itself, particularly as we approach a more collective model of government control, even if it creeps in quietly through the back door. It prefers to see us as consumers, citizens, viewers, listeners, and other convenient faceless aggregates. There is no sinister intent here, it is the only way capitalism and democracy can work and fulfil their role in driving our western society. But, even so, could there be another way? Could society be re-imagined as one big happy family? Perhaps we add a touch of realism and strike out ‘happy’ and consider us one big slightly flawed family? Is there a model for this? There is, but its flaws will need to be honestly addressed before we can consider it fit for purpose.

It is the Christian Church and here is one of its founding statements.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Re-read this and, this time, try to imagine a single entity, one big Worldwide Christian family. I believe this is God’s intention and the reason I mention flaws is that this single entity, birthed in Jerusalem in Acts 2, has morphed into over 40,000 separate entities, many of which are at odds with each other and few with true functional relationships with each other. What God intended as a true reflection of His Character and Ways, has been moulded by the World into a multinational organisation ‘operating in the field of religion.’ Nevertheless, it is here where we start our journey.