Kill 'Em All

12 March 2001
George will all be over by Christmas.

Fuck this for a game of soldiers. I've had enough; I'm off home and I'm not coming back until this mess is cleared up and put away. When it's all been disinfected, when everything's been put back in the right box. After every dead man has been picked up, named and burnt, consoling letters sent to his wife and children and mother, details filed away and stored on the main supercomputer to avoid confusion in the next call-up....Only after all of these items have been carried out and performed properly will you see my face back on these fields. If you're lucky.

This is the problem with war; the mess. The blood which only washed out with cold water - not hot, which cooks the plasma proteins like egg yolk and leaves a stain that no housewife can remove. Limbs everywhere; eyeballs popping underfoot as your men run towards the enemy to mow them down, and enough gore to swim in. And the enemy running towards your men, ready to spill as much gook again in the name of honest battle and victory. Bodily fluids of both sides mixing together to perfect equilibrium whilst the fighters above only increase the volume of liquid spilt. it's not big and it's not clever, and it certainly won't look good on your shirt in the morning. And so macho - "I don't care about the state of my moleskins- I've got funny coloured buggers to slaughter!". Irregardless of what Army Uniforms™ may say, the stylish khakis and greys do show the discolouration of urine and bile sprayed on by the sliced open bladder and spleen of your twitching foe, and mother of God, it's no easy task to remove them again.

I'm not advocating a ban on war. I believe that the ritual brutal slaughter of our countries youngest and finest plays an integral role in the psychological upbringing of any young citizen. The knowledge that you little Jimmy, tomorrow, may be called on to go out and butcher some upstart from a nig-nog wig-wog country which doesn't even have a decent system of democracy - doesn't that make you feel proud? Doesn't knowing that you might celebrate your nineteenth birthday on seventeen different sides of a battlefield make you want to spend your last few nights on Blighty soil breeding with some mucky wench, who'll bear your offspring whilst you gasp your last, knee-deep in your own intestines? By God I should say so too. There's no aphrodisiac so strong as the knowledge of one's own imminent doom, splattered on the uncaring soil of a strange terrain, and we do need to keep the population numbers up for the next round of battle fodder.

And war's not just for the youngsters. The old folks who survived the war of their day can look back on those horrorshow experiences and know in their hearts that, whatever life may have served them since - heartache, job loss, dentures - it will never compare to the sorrow on the battlefield of losing your dearest friend in your arms as he twitches, moaning as every internal organ collapses in on itself. Makes a man stronger. Makes a population closer.

So yes. War is a good, healthy, manly pastime, essential to a country's well-being. But the mess! The puddles of gunky congealing ick getting into a soldier's boots and running down inside the socks. I don't feel that doing justice to the full glory and passion of war can be done justice if half the time is spent scraping innards from your boots. Just distracts from the true purpose. If all a man can think about whilst rolling through the midst of combat is whether he'll have the time to scrub and starch his trousers before the next round of bloodshed begins, then that's not the point of it at all! He should be thinking of the divine power that he'll wield as goes into the field, armed to the teeth as a God-like killing machine, not washing powders and conditioners.

This is what I propose. Lasers. Lots of the bastards and big ones too. Preferably blue and with shiny casing, and which make a "zwooosh" noise when turned on. Cleaner than any gun, they'll cauterise a man's flesh whilst tearing through it, providing instantaneous death but no muck. Gore no more. Our men's mind will be free to consider the higher joy of killing for one's country and not the trivialities of cleaning products. War will be quicker as the only obstacles on the field will be the sliced and diced body parts, not ditches filled with goo. And sending live televisual images back to the eager public will be so much easier to get past the censurs with no gratuitous violence.

Yes. War. Good clean war. It makes sense. It makes sense.