Osowiec

Time to go deep here. I love a bit of metal music. However we sing these lyrics and forget about the meaning. This song with the killer beat (honestly no pun intended ) is a song called “Dead hundred men” I highly recommend you listen to it on repeat, whilst reading this. Its by a band called Sabaton.

The chorus, which inspired this writing, goes as follows.

“And that’s when the dead men are marching again…

Osowiec then and again
Attack of the dead, hundred men
Facing the led once again
Hundred men
Charge again
Die again”

It refers to the battle of Osowiec in World War One.

Who cares if you died in horror and pain? 90 years later, a Swede will sing your praises in a song written for “by the fire” praise and Valhallar. Because the Vikings never die.

I know absolutely nothing about World War One more than it was not worth 20 million peoples lives, 21 million injured and wiping out an entire generation of men across all 5 habituated continents because someone shot an archduke . It also precipitated World War 2 and God knows we humans really turned up the dial to 11.

The depth of depravity and insanity is breathtaking. Someone shot Archduke Ferdinand. 3 countries declared war. The U.K. quite frankly couldn’t keep their business to themselves and launched into a war that took place on a continent we now say we’re not part of. What a difference a century makes.

So then bodies start dropping. Modern warfare has immunised people from actual suffering.

Remember, one death is a tragedy. 1 million is a statistic. Which is my point. Someone has written a song about the senseless slaughter of 7,000 young men. Know their names. Every. Single. One. Because their mothers, sisters, fathers, friends and neighbours never forgot. Those people also died in pain, the pain of loss. A loss they never forgot. So neither should you. History talks about “great man theory” I.e. the incandescent sadist that sent men knowingly to their deaths. But if we were forced to memorise the names of all 20 million men women and children. And picture a different face for each of them then we would start to understand the enormity of the sickness that went on for 4 years. At some point (i.e. immediately). It became a war of attrition. You had to starve out “the colonies” to pay for it. Someone could have called it off day one. They wouldn’t know they saved 20 million people.

They could have stopped at 100,000 deaths.

They could have stopped at the first civilian death.

They could have stopped at 4 months in.

No, we stopped 4 years in when let’s face it. Everyone lost. Why did we wait until everyone had lost more than they could possibly replace? Traumatised several generations. Wiped out one. Heard the term “war widows?” Women suffering from lack of husbands. A generation of fatherless households. Everyone lost. Yet they went on… for 4 years. Irrespective of the cost to quite literally everyone.

So let’s talk about this particular chorus. The beat and singing hit by the way. But I feel like it glorifies war.

“And that’s when the dead men are marching again”

Can you imagine marching into a sucide mission with no ability to turn back?

You, yourself don’t want to die. The people who have been wronged are hundreds of miles away and yet you are fighting their war. You are no more than a pawn. In fact less than that. There are 16 pawns on any given chessboard. There’s 100 men in your “company” and you will all die and no one will blink. You are far from your mother, father all who love you. It will be months before they hear of your death, and they’ll pray the end was easy. It was not. You have trenchfoot. Not everyone dies on a sunny day, so you are wet and no one cares. You are hungry, you haven’t been warm since you left your home, technically lost. You are in someone else’s’ country, having nothing but blind trust that the “enemy” is out there. You can march for hours. Days. The “enemy” by the way are your age, you have far more in common with them than your countrymen that sent you here. They too have girlfriends, hobbies, and jobs back home. And at the end of the day, you are all men. You all pee standing up. They don’t even speak the same language as you. Therefore how do you know they actually want to kill you? Or take away your property? The truth? If you asked “the enemy” they’d tell you.

“I’m scared too.” “I don’t want to do this. Its, hard, its dangerous, and no one cares if I live or die. I’m worth less than the animals that I take care of”

So here you are. Taking one more mortal breath, marching to your inevitable death, looking over your shoulder, waiting to see someone running towards you screaming

“Stop, wait, its all been a mistake!” or better yet

“The war is over, lets go home!”

Instead you put one foot in front of the other, feeling every ache and pain in your body whilst you still can. Not knowing if this step is your last. Reminiscing about the last letter you got from your mum, saying its lambing season. You are a farmer boy at heart after all. You want to be in the fields. And no, a battle field does not count. Your mum was telling you about your nephew who has just started walking, and how much she misses you. Yet. You. March.

Then you reach the battlefield.

“Hundred men”

You look to your right, scared boys. You look to your left, scared men. Everyone is scared. Then you start to walk. You smell something unpleasant. Is it fear? Is it urine? Is it the metallic tang of heavy machinery? Might be all 3. Actually is Chlorine, Chlorine Gas. However you keep going. The smell is choking you. Its poison. Yes darling, you will die of poison gas. You can’t duck out of the way like you can for bullets. The air you breathe, which you have a natural instinct to fight for… That is what will kill you. You will choke to death. Whilst you cough up blood and bits of your melted lungs. You watch as your friends fall. You pray to be shot…and then God answers that prayer.

“Charge again.”

You put your hand to your mouth and nose. You. Want. To. Go. Home. You can hear screams of your comrads in your mother tongue. You can also hear screams in a foreign language as “the enemy” or as I like to think of it “Fellow 21 year old boys.” die in pain too.

Men wailing, men screams for mothers, lovers, and for the agony to end. To quote Adele in Skyfall.

“This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the Earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again”

“Die again.”

And you perish. Your loved ones will not find out for weeks, if not months. They will have to fight and struggle to get a plaque put up in your village with your name on it… Which by the way will not last 25 years because WW2 comes to steal the small amount of peace they regained. Your nephew will die in the same way you did. Too young. Too scared. Too far away from home. For the sake of a man they’ve never heard of until they came to the village to put a gun in his hand. History cruelly repeats itself, because when en mass… A man’s life matters less.

Hearing one scream will traumatise you. Hearing constant screaming is background noise. That’s how we justify not hearing the pleas of human beings for humanity. We still do it. Homeless people on our doorstep. Pleas for social justice from the spectrum of “Non white people,” Women, the LGBTQ+. People in foreign far flung countries who we poison their waters to extract “precious metals.” What, pray tell, is more precious than a human life? Gold? Bring back weirgeld. An Anglo Saxon concept when you had to pay for every person you killed. Not just to the family, but the state(the King). It was heavy enough that it was a deterrent. It was intended to be progressively ruinous. The more “important the person” the heavier the fine. Back when human lives mattered and even slavery was less cruel than their descendants take on the concept. It was lower level, prisoners of (just) war, and could be ended far easier.

Bring back the Warbands, a group of specialist fighters, from 2 dozen to 2 hundred where battles were fought by men who were actually wronged. Not their cousin’s, neighbour’s, friend’s, son. The steps of removal between the person who has been wronged, and the person that needs to face the consequences and pay the ultimate price. It is that removal of direct consequences that have caused so many problems. The fact that this battle did not end the war shocks me. You used chlorine gas to melt the lungs of God’s children. Effectively torturing them, then you shot them. This is something that would break the Geneva Convention had it been written at the time. Yet not only did it not end the war, these evil men continued to conduct themselves in a manner that killed millions for another 3 years and 10 months. And every night after a hard day of sending men to hell they would kiss their wives and hug their children. They learnt nothing from those abhorrent deaths except how to more effectively kill people. Because the people who authorised the use of chlorine gas weren’t on the field when it was unleashed. There is a direct correlation, in my opinion, between how far you remove the decision makers from the consequences of their actions and how heinously these men will seek to offend Almighty God.

Bonus. “ Facing the Lead once again”

This is a bonus because its not in order of the song. Its also a play on words. “Facing the lead” rather than “facing the led” which is in the lyrics, why? because its facing the bullets which back then where made of lead.

In my opinion, this concept of warfare really started to go left when the George the second was the last king to fight in battle. Can you imagine how many hours the Iraq war would have lasted if we’d sent our then 77 year old Queen to die in a foreign land looking for “Weapons of Mass Destruction?” There would be uproar! Yet that’s what “God save the Queen means” “God save you from your enemies, your Majesty” That is what her ancestors signed her up for. We’d have marched in the streets against sending a 77 year old woman to go fight in a foreign land. Yet apparently 18 year old boys are okay. Same level of consent. Or how many seconds that Iraq would have lasted if we’d sent Tony Blair, the same man that effectively ordered the deaths of 151,000 civilians? Or his then adult son, Ewan Blair? If the Iraq war had to be settled by Saddam, George Bush and Blair, the UK national debt would be a minimum of £8.7 Billion lighter. We’d have lost 1 “British soldier” and not 179. It would have been over within minutes. Not years. When you have to personally cause violence to Saddam, and there’s a chance he will kill you, you will think twice about your actions. Instead, you sent other people’s sons to die.

You need to be there. You need to understand. You need to bleed too. Otherwise how do you know when there has been too much blood lost?

You can’t “just tell” how many is too many. World war 1 killed 20 million people. Precisely 20 million too many. Yet the world leaders spent 4 years glorifiying slaughter whilst the common people bled out.

Saying “I know its hard but keep pushing” Hard? “ I’ve lost everyone I have and the state will not look after me after sacrificing me to “the cause” I will die in the agony of loneliness and dispair. But yeah, I’ll keep pushing…pushing myself off a cliff so I don’t starve to death when both my husband and sons die in the war.” Then. Just when you think… Never again. 20 years, 9 months and 11 days we’re back. WW2, even worse. More sons. More death. More destruction. So before you have a chance to heal, repair your village, town. You, your family, your whole country are…

“Facing the Lead once again

Hundreds of men,

Charge Again.

Die again.”

And frankly, we’ve learnt nothing.

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother Smith.