Planning

Just bought a copy of Barbara Tuchman’s book, The Guns of August. I dropped off some clothes at St. Vincent DePaul in Fredericksburg. Bought the book for a dollar while I was in the store. Started reading it right away. The August in question was 1914 when the world lost its collective mind, that’s the gun part. Although, in reading it you realize the leaders had spent years planning for things to go bad.

They defined their enemies. They had aspirations. They took the measure of their opponents. It was a chess game played with real people. Politicians schemed. Soldiers planned. If A does B then C does D and before you know we’ll be in Paris or Berlin or whatever city they wanted to conquer. Of course, guys who took their lessons from the fields of Waterloo or the Franco-Prussian war had no idea they were about to discover the joys of industrialization.

One hundred and ten years later, they’re still digging up the steel. Farmer’s in France find ordinance whenever they plow. Bones, too. They come to the surface. The trenches are visible as well. Scars in the land. The scars of the soul have faded, however, people seem to be back to relishing war. The greatest generation is going, no one much thinks about Vietnam, guys play with guns in the woods, and our leaders rouse the rabble. It will be a good book one day. And none of us will be in it.