Why Military History?

I’ve always struggled to explain in words, to others and even myself, just why I am so passionate about military history. What some may find dull and dry, I find inspiring and fascinating. Despite my penchant for words however, all I can do in striving for an answer to this question of ‘Why?’ is quote from others and anchor myself with them, in the hope that one day I will find the right words, in the right sequence, because ‘I need to know, to be able to explain this.’

Ian Hislop wrote in the foreword to Neil Oliver’s book “Not Forgotten“, about remembrance, Britain, and the Great War, that by memorialising the names of those who were lost in this cataclysm – “nearly a million men from Britain died” – it was a way for family, friends, and indeed, a nation, to remember, pay their respects – however inadequate that may have seemed – and grieve their loss. The most common means of memorialising these men, both in Great Britain and Australia, was to inscribe their names on some form of monument. By setting the names of those lost ‘in stone,’ they became a permanent reminder in our daily lives as we passed these memorials on our way to and from work, home, school etc. Though their bodies no longer existed, at least part of their identity – their names – did. By giving someone a name, we allow them to be more than just a statistic. Someone nameless is someone forgotten.

The intention of the television series “Not Forgotten” (which I haven’t seen) and the book based upon it, was “to turn the names in stone back, however briefly and incompletely, into remembered lives.” “Remembrance – beyond anything commanded in breathless prose on war memorials – is in the details.”

A number of years ago, during one of many abortive attempts to find myself a career, a man whose name I now ironically forget, said “The very least we can do for a person is to acknowledge them.” That sentence has now become one of my life’s philosophies, and I believe that it applies just as appropriately to those of previous generations as it does to our own, here and now.

Military history is story-telling. As humans, we tell stories – in a variety of formats – in an attempt to discover who or what we are. Why are we here? One of the things that defines us as a species is the capacity and desire to critically look at or beyond ourselves, and one means of achieving that is to record and tell stories. We are the product of everyone and everything who and that came before us. To pretend otherwise is not only arrogant but delusional.

So why do I feel the need to be a story-teller? I don’t know. Perhaps it comes down to something purely selfish: a lack of confidence in my own identity. Everyone likes a good story, so story-tellers must be needed and valued, hence I have a place in the world? Maybe. Maybe not.

Some may think it a morbid path to follow, but I’ve been gripped by it, and thus far have had neither the desire nor the ability to shake myself free. I’m transfixed by those names carved in stone, on metal, or a faded page.

Rereading the above, I’ve realised that none of it adequately answers the question I initially posed: “Why?” Perhaps there is no answer, or rather, no words to express it outside of myself. I suspect this will be the first of many attempts to prove otherwise.

This has been my 50th blog post at Timbered Knoll Press. I hope I have Informed, Entertained, or Inspired you in some way. Stay tuned, there is much more to come, because there so many more names yet to be acknowledged.

 

[References: Ian Hislop and Neil Oliver in “Not Forgotten” by Neil Oliver, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2005, p.Xiii & p.272].