Book
2, Letter 17
part
2 of 3
To
Tacitus: on the treatment of fallen foes
*
Tacitus, we go now from the bones of one story to the soul of another.
In
my broader reading, I keep finding references to the manner in which
the dead of war are treated in different ways. From the earliest
Greek references of Theseus returning the bodies of fallen enemies to
their kin, to the modern day accounts of atrocities committed during
the Vietnam war, the way people feel about dead soldiers makes for an
interesting analysis of our sense of humanity and honour.
I
hadn't originally planned to write about this, I was hoping to get to
the weird black magic curse that killed Germanicus, but in reading
further about modern practices regarding the bodies of fallen
enemies, I discovered something truly fascinating.
Operation
Wandering Souls, is an Australian Army initiative where mementos and
artifacts taken by Australian soldiers during the Vietnam War (1965 –
1975CE), are being returned to Vietnam in an effort to locate some of
the 300,000 Vietnamese missing war dead. A further part of this
project, is a map of overwhelming detail of every single combat
encounter involving Australian soldiers during the war. The
Australian Army documented every enemy body found, and recorded
details of the burials which were done at the combat sites. The map
links photos of the location, photos of the soldiers involved, and
images of any mementos or artifacts taken from, and now returned to
the site.
I
have a fascination with certain aspects of war. War seems to
encapsulate all the worst things about the human species, but what
interests me is the way that in the middle of all that horror, some
people are capable of both nobility of purpose and compassion for
their enemies.
Some
of these stories cast long shadows across time, and whether we know
about it or not, we stand in those shadows every day.
The lost souls of
war are buried in shallow graves, and Vietnam has ghost stories
enough to send chills down my spine. You see, the Australian
Operation: Wandering Souls, is not the first of that name.
During the Vietnam war, the American and Australian armies also had
an operation under the same name, but their goal was not to return
lost artifacts, or to help locate the missing bodies of fallen foes.
Quite the opposite.
There is a
popular belief in Vietnam, with its roots in Buddhism, that if a
person dies while away from their home, and if their body is not
buried with the proper ceremony, the soul will wander lost forever,
tortured by demons, suffering the eternal hunger of the dead. The
American PSYOPS division (with the involvement of other allied
forces) intentionally played upon this cultural/religious belief.
Through the use of loudspeakers attached to helicopters, boats,
aeroplanes, or carried on the backs of soldiers, they played at
incredible volumes, special recordings made to simulate the sounds of
screaming hungry ghosts, with recordings of crying children begging
their fathers to come home, accompanied by the religious funeral
dirges familiar to all Vietnamese people. These recordings were only
ever played at night, and some of the aeroplanes used in this
operation were able to fly in such a way (at a certain altitude and
engine RPM) as to make their engines inaudible from the ground below,
while the howling sounds of wandering ghosts could be heard by the
soldiers huddling even in their underground tunnels and bunkers.
In the article
written by SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.), entitled The “Wandering
Soul” tape of Vietnam, I found many worthy stories, poems,
anecdotes, photographs and newspaper articles which I would love to
share a select few with you.
I will begin with
the Vietnamese poet, Nguyen Du, from his poem “A call to wandering
souls”
“Year after
year exposed to wind and rain,
on the cold ground they lie, sighing.
At dawn, when the cock crows, they flee,
only to grope their way again when night comes”
on the cold ground they lie, sighing.
At dawn, when the cock crows, they flee,
only to grope their way again when night comes”
“Strangers
have buried you in careless haste,
no loved ones
near,
no proper
rites...
...and under
the wan moon,
no kindly
smoke of incense wreathes for you.”
Dan Carlin (a
history podcaster) said that history doesn't repeat, but sometimes it
rhymes, (and I'm sure he was quoting someone else...), but the
following story of the Jungle of Screaming Souls seems a haunted
parallel to the Teutoburg forest.
Bao Ninh, a
former North Vietnamese soldier and author of 'The Sorrow of War'
(1991), tells of an area called the jungle of screaming souls where
the North Vietnamese 27th Battalion was wiped out except for ten
survivors by American and South Vietnamese troops. He says:
“From then
on it was called the jungle of screaming souls. Just hearing the name
whispered was enough to send chills down the spine. Perhaps the
screaming souls gathered together on special festival days as members
of the Lost Battalion, lining up in the little diamond-shaped
clearing, checking their ranks and numbers. The sobbing whispers were
heard deep in the jungle at night, the howls carried on the wind.
Perhaps they really were the voices of the wandering souls of dead
soldiers.
But Tacitus, I
would not do this tale justice if I only shared with you the written
legends and poetry of war. I'm not shy of the dirty truth, so here
is a recording of one of the Wandering Souls tapes. SGM Herbert
Friedman summarises one of the tape scripts in this way:
“In general,
the messages were as follows:
Girl's voice:
Daddy, daddy,
come home with me, come home. Daddy! Daddy!
Man's voice:
Ha! (his
daughter's name). Who is that? Who is calling me? Oh, my daughter? My
wife? Daddy is back home with you, my daughter! I am back home with
you, my wife. But my body is gone. I am dead, my family.
I…..Tragic,
how tragic.
My friends, I
come back to let you know that I am dead! I am dead! It's Hell, Hell!
It is a senseless death! How senseless! Senseless! But when I
realized the truth, it was too late. Too late. Friends, while you are
still alive, there is still a chance you will be reunited with your
love ones. Do you hear what I say? Go home! Go home, my friends!
Hurry! Hurry! If not, you will end up like me. Go home my friends
before it is too late. Go home! Go home my friends!”
U.S PSYOP soldier
stands watch as an ARVN soldier broadcasts a surrender appeal. -
I think that
people do things for a reason, or rather, nothing is done at random.
The experiences of humans at war are not irrelevant to civilians,
rather, sometimes I feel that military customs shed light on civilian
customs as well. Though we don't talk about these things, we all
have beliefs about the dead, some instinctive, others deeply
ingrained social ideals. The way we treat our enemies, and how we
think of them alive or dead, is, I think, hugely representative of
our social beliefs at large. It raises questions of self respect,
compassion, nobility and justice. It is a massively convoluted
subject that cannot be summed up in any sort of glib and shallow
manner, but sometimes an army motto is just the thing to set the
wheels of the mind turning.
The American 5th
Special Operations Squadron, a group who used the Wandering Soul
tapes had the official motto “The truth shall make them free,”
but their unofficial motto was “Better to bend the mind than
destroy the body.”
Helicopter Tape Deck Playing a Propaganda message
There's more to come, Tacitus, but that will have to wait....
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