In search of an antidote
I visited Battleship Cove in Fall River yesterday, trying to get a better grasp of a book I’m reading, “Pacific War Diary 1942-45” by James J. Fahey. (Much more about the book another time.)
Fahey was on a light cruiser, but he did encounter the battleship Massachusetts and that got me thinking that a visit to the Massachusetts – I haven’t been there in several years – would give me a taste for the environment he describes in his diary. And it did. I came away with three very strong impressions:
- A young man, far from home, in a dangerous environment, confined to anywhere from 300-feet to 1,000-feet of steel and glass floating on a hostile ocean, developed an unparalleled sense of comradeship. You could smell it, taste it, feel it as you moved about that ship.
- A tremendous amount of skill, creative energy, and plain muscle goes into making war. Standing on the bow of the Massachusetts and looking back at the anchor, 16-inch guns, radar mast, bridge . . . all of it . . . and then trying to imagine the thousands and thousands of hands and minds that labored long and hard to create this, is simply awesome. What a machine! What an organization it took to keep it afloat and functioning!
- Militarily we simply out-classed and overpowered our opponents. This came to me in two places. First, there’s a huge exhibit of scale model aircraft. Those depicting our forces go on for a dozen or more cases. The Japanese aircraft take up a single case. They had good planes, but we had many more and we kept turning out not simply more of the same, but new designs to carry out special missions. Other display cases show captured Japanese rifles and machine guns. Obviously they were used to deadly purpose against our troops, but again they seemed simple and crude in comparison to our own weapons.
These things came to me, not in an intellectual sense, but in a gut-level emotional sense. They arose from the deluge of sounds smells, sights and feelings that surround you if you walk these steel decks, burrow into the tunnel-like environment of steel sea doors, steep ladders, and narrow, dark corridors. Look at the cased memorabilia – cigarette packages, posters, helmets, grenades, bullets, K-rations - and simply let yourself drift back sixty years. Be an 18-year-old. Feel the vibrations that must of made that ship a living entity for its crew. Sit and eat a hamburger in the mess. Laugh with your crew mates. Bum a cigarette from a friend. Pretend you are not nervous as your ship heads up “the slot” to bombard a Japanese island fortress.
Battleship Cove is nicely complemented by reading Fahey’s diary. It is a fascinating document – it is both naive and honest, crudely written and yet still appealing. He does relatively little reflecting on his situation, but at times you get glimpses that remind me of Chris Hedges and his assertion that “war is a drug.” For example, at one point Fahey writes:
After being in so many campaigns, you’re disappointed if one passes you by. There’s always the next one. When you find yourself in it, there’s always the realization of ow crazy you were in thinking that way. When this one’s completed, never again. When it’s finally terminated, you’re always ready for the next one. It gets to be a disease after a time.
War is a drug . . .
. . . and like a drug it is easily abused, becoming habit forming and tremendously costly.
But as terrible as it is, as stupid as it is, as horrible as it is, we continue to be attracted to it. Why else would there be a place like Battleship Cove – 2 PT boats, a destroyer, submarine, and the USS Massachusetts – why? As a memorial? Yes, I’m sure there are some that feel that way. But they run camps here. Kids sleep on the battleship over night. I watched them running about, climbing on the guns. They didn’t look like they were visiting a graveyard. And, of course, the Massachusetts didn’t lose a single man, though it was in combat throughout the war. No, they are here to absorb the sense of being at war. They are here to marvel at the technology and sheer power of this machine. They are here to sit in the 40mm gun mounts, put their feet on the pedals and their hands on the firing mechanism. And so are many of the adults. It is the History Channel – what I call the “War Channel” – come alive in 3D. In their minds eye they see the enemy planes attacking and they shoot them down.
I’m not railing against this. On one level it does sicken me. But it is what we are and so on another level, I simply want to understand it – to feel something of what others feel – and in the end, maybe get a little closer to finding an antidote for this drug called war.