Enlisting Redemption

by D. Allen Henry

  Fig. 1 Map Showing Gloucestershire

  Prologue

  You will no doubt ask how I could have been such an unmitigated jerk. My only reply is that in fact I was a jerk, and that is most assuredly no excuse whatsoever. It is instead an admission, a profound confession of the foolishness and inexperience of youth that I have lived with for half of my life. Such is the frailty of the human condition, to which I of all people am certainly no exception. There can be only one means of redemption for such reprehensible actions - other than suicide - which doesn’t really count, because then what is left to redeem? Accordingly, when the enormous immorality of my actions became apparent to me, there was but one course of action available for my redemption, and that path has become the singular embodiment of my life.

  I was born in Gloucester, England. Gloucester was originally a Roman city, founded in the late first century, sometime after the Roman Emperor Claudius defeated the Celts and brought Britannica under Roman rule. Some say the city was originally named Glevum, but how this evolved into the modern rendition, like so many other of our modern terms, is obscured by the passage of time.

  I grew up in Wharton Manor, in the Cotswolds, on the eastern border of Gloucestershire. A lovelier place than Gloucestershire you will never find on this great Earth. Although the area is certainly not the oldest settled part of England, Wharton Manor is nevertheless located in what is commonly referred to as the Old Shire, a term that is thus cultural rather than historical, in keeping with the custom of descriptive misnomers that are peculiar to nearly every human society.

  The identifying geographical attribute of Gloucestershire is the River Severn. This great gash of intermittently navigable water runs right down to the sea, and as such, Gloucestershire has been subjected to conquest and warfare for as long as there has been recorded history. It was therefore inevitable that the Shire should fall at one time or another into the hands of Celts, Romans, Saxons, and Normans. And in the twentieth century, it was for a time in danger of falling into the hands of the Third Reich, along with the rest of Britain.

  These then are the roots of my birthplace, a place of pride in its heritage, a heritage of constant change. I was born shortly after the Second World War, the greatest conflagration in recorded history, the grandson of an Earl who had fought in the Great War, and the son of an Earl who had fought in the Second World War. And while it is true that the wars ended before I came into the world, for the people of Gloucestershire, the memory of wartime remained a living and breathing image when I was young. Ultimately, the heritage of my upbringing is thus embedded in failure, sadness, and still more sadness. And these are the underpinnings that shaped me as I grew into manhood in the 1960’s in the Old Shire.

  When I was ten, my father took me on a lengthy trip to Verdun. Verdun was a battlefield in northern France during the Great War. It was ancient and decrepit, or so it seemed at the time to a boy of ten. Since, other than the eroding trenches, there wasn’t much remaining of the battlefield to be seen there, I was uncertain as to exactly why we crossed the Channel and drove so far to see such a desolate place. My father patiently explained to me in route that our sojourn was necessary because there was a lesson to be learned there.

  I remember that we parked the car, my father subsequently leading me to a large ceremonial building that seemed to be constructed from concrete. The structure was long and narrow, incongruously adorned with a tall spire in the middle. He halted adjacent to the building and announced, “Son, this is the site of the greatest battle ever fought on this planet. Seven hundred thousand men died here in the year 1916.” He then bent down and, pointing toward the small glass window panes at the base of the building, he explained to me, “Look into those windows there. That is in fact a tomb, and if you look closely, you will see that it is filled with the bones of several hundred thousand humans.”

  I still recall staring into those windows with a macabre sense of fascination. The massive mound of bones in that crypt was beyond the capacity of a ten year old boy to comprehend. And today, thirty years on, my inability to grasp that humans could do such things to one another has abated not one iota.

  I recall asking inanely, “I say, who won the battle?”

  “Right. Neither side won,” he responded succinctly.

  Eyeing him doubtfully, I replied with self-assurance, “I thought there was always a winner in war!”

  “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he patiently observed, that in and of itself apparently being some sort of profound truth.

  “Then what indeed was the point, father?” I asked. At the age of ten one is supposed to know these things, but I confess that I had always been confused about the Great War.

  “Simple question, quite complicated answer,” he replied. Scratching his chin in apparent thought as he took my hand and commenced walking between the rows of white crosses that stretched as far as I could see, he observed dispassionately, “I suppose it was a misunderstanding. But what a misunderstanding it was.”

  “Which side won the war?” I asked. I had heard various answers to that question, thus I recall being terribly interested to obtain the ‘correct’ answer. You see, my father always had the definitive answer to every question.

  “Although history records that the Allies won, I suppose that in reality it was all for naught,” he replied despondently.

  This was not an acceptable answer to a boy of ten. Thus, I decided to keep the pressure on, hounding him with, “Right. If neither side won, why did they cease fighting?”

  “I say, this is only my opinion, mind you,” he began, to which I immediately perked up. Whenever my father commenced by saying ‘this is only my opinion’, I understood that something important was coming next. Accordingly, I was all ears when he continued, explaining, “However, it seems to me that when the inexperienced are in decision-making positions, there will inevitably be vengeance. My son, the singular antidote to vengeance is compassion.”

  This was another one of my father’s pronouncements that came across as rubbish to a ten year old child, but somehow, against all expectation, I still remember it verbatim, now more than thirty years on. But at that moment I recall needing still further clarification, thus I queried, “Right, so who was in the wrong?”

  He replied succinctly, “Son, wars are often fought for the poorest of reasons. To say that one side was right and the other wrong would be a dramatic oversimplification. What I can say is this – the Great War was not in actuality won by either side, and when the supposed victors showed little compassion for the losing side, the stage was set for a second conflagration of even more monumental proportions. But when the Second World War ended, because of the failures after The Great War, it was understood that greater compassion should be shown to the losing side. And now, ten years on, that very compassion seems to have averted a third war of global proportions. And while it may seem self-evident that compassion is the proper treatment of those who have erred, it is rarely demonstrated at the conclusion of war. Indeed, the aftermath of the Second World War seems to be the first time in modern history that such compassion has been accorded to the losing side.”

  Now, more than thirty years having passed, I still remember that day as if it were yesterday. Still, I confess that I had to live from that day to this, enduring much hardship and confusion, in order to understand the lesson that my father taught me on that day. And ultimately, his words led me from the enormous failures of my youth to the path of redemption. Thus here, without further delay, is my story, the story of my redemption.