War Memoir: The Thin Line

An American commander in Guadalcanal reflects on how the varying contributions to the island engagement with Japanese forces reveals a strange human ditch regarding complete war.

Here's a war-vignette I felt the inspiration to write after watching the provocative and poignant 20th century film The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick).

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We were positioned in the East as the World War continued. We had to take Guadalcanal. Meanwhile, back in Northern Ireland, troubles raged between Irish Catholics and British Protestants as the IRA tackled British military/police in Belfast, but now, many of these Irish rebels found themselves drafted into the major war, the World War. We arrived on boats to take Guadalcanal from the Japanese. There were lights and smoke and men from the sky and men pouring out ships shooting. War has to mean something.

It's no treat finding yourself cornered and the willing target of saboteurs hiding in the marshes with natural camouflage, lurking like snakes in the tall grass and in the swamps of that island. We had to take the position from the Japanese, and our superiors weren't forgiving about our level of required daring and initiative. Many found themselves taking on a Christ-like pose, as the war signaled a special end of innocence. The boys from Belfast wondered what was more odd, a world war involving random Japanese fighters or the inter-religious Protestant-Catholic stew brewing back home in Belfast.

Our soldiers were young men with dreams in their eyes but rifles in their hands. They knew their mission was to kill or be killed. Casualties were merely statistical numbers. The Japanese wanted Guadalcanal as a key fortification for a position in the East for the Axis of evil. We represented America, the Big Brother of global democracy. The island felt like a giant anti-playground of dizzying tall grass which we had to skulk through like basic assassins.

I was honored with the higher leadership position as a commander of one of the primary American forces at Guadalcanal. My only two superiors in that island told us about the reality of martial strength during this engagement and the need to harden hearts and think clearly about the reality of shooting before meditating. This was no time for youthful wishes and sentimental reflections on war novels we read in high-school. No, sir, I felt the need to convey a certain sense of ridiculous maturity to my soldiers. After all, war almost always meant a certain orientation towards forgivable arrogance. I had to wonder what some of my Belfast soldiers were thinking as I eyed them with a small smile, encouraging them to imagine they were back home but with a larger landscape of complete competitiveness!

One of my superiors gave a stern talk about the ridiculous feeling of giving in to human empathy and pity while engaging legions of prowling camouflaged 'Japs' who lurked all around the island and were sunk in around bunkers and trenches with powerful rapid-fire large guns that he called Killers. This superior commanding officer in our American force at Guadalcanal reinforced in me that this was no time to feel lucky to sing the fortunes of the Irish. No, this was a time of unified warfare and only two sides or lines were drawn between the sides. It really didn't matter that our enemy happened to be Japanese on that island. Maybe this superior officer had good intentions when he delivered this prophetic lesson through stern talk during down-time or rest-time!

One of our Belfast boys started chatting romantically about how the landscape war on this Eastern island ironically suggested to him that thoughts about the unfortunate targeting of civilian targets and areas in Northern Ireland by rogue or excommunicated IRA were merely reminders that standard war was completely organized while regional battles were only highlights of human frailty. I had to admonish him, however, to remind our soldiers that there wasn't real time to contemplate the contours of target selection and that we all honestly hoped he'd return home to Belfast to successfully marshal and organize his pseudo-terrorist forces to resist the opportunity to attack civilian targets in Northern Ireland. No, this Japanese engagement at Guadalcanal reminded us that this 'thin line' of global warfare signaled a deranged intelligence --- one of absolute danger!

The Guadalcanal offensive was an important maneuver for the American contribution to the World War. We'd be commended for our role in securing a key position in the East and destabilizing the Japanese control of that side of the world in favor of the Axis of evil. In other words, we all felt like little red ants, ready to sting simply in the name of necessary success. We all started to feel sentimental honestly, wishing we were stationed for no intelligent reason in Northern Ireland to help Irish Catholics and British Protestants come to a humble coexistence and peace and find solace in Parliament. Such regional politics was certainly preferred, regardless of the 'guerrilla' signature, to this brand of complete global nihilism.

I watched two soldiers crying with a dead fellow patriot in their arms during a routing of a camp of a Japanese unit on the island. There was a fire all around the area, and we all secretly hoped that our fallen brethren would die quickly so we could keep running around shooting. No one cared really, about anything really. Maybe that's the real drama of global war --- total line of continuity. Isn't that crazy?

War is hell. No one likes regional hell either like the Los Angeles Race Riots or Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. War at this level doesn't comfort us in the knowledge that 'we all have to fight someday' or find solace in political motivation perfection. I mean, did the Union soldiers during the American Civil War take great comfort in the knowledge that killing for the end of slavery meant killing would be absolutely ideal?

When we go home, we'll watch movies about this kind of war. We'll sit back and drink cold ones and share quiet time with our wives and kids who kept patient while their daddies became sociable killers on the global stage. I hope we'll think of glowing neon telephones that remind us that there's always an intelligent or even imaginative sign of human communication through the hellfire of the reality of civilization anarchy. Humans farm, true; but humans fight too --- quite dramatically!

I myself seek to go home and write a very entertaining and colorful comic book story for Marvel about Belfast men loosely associated with the modern IRA drafted into the great World War and offering their special brand of social medicine and poetry and yes regret for the soldiers on this international stage. Maybe this kind of comic book story which I certainly intend to make perfect will show humanity the strange 'allure' of imagining complete monstrosity well. Why do kids like such comic book stories and art featuring imagery about the natural human instinct to basically create dragons?

GREEN SHADOW: "I was positioned in Guadalcanal and fought under my commander John Thomas, who was very intelligent and thoughtful despite being basically as relentless as his superiors and single-minded. I've been an underground operative for the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland and build ties between Sinn Fein and the Central Intelligence Agency, which is how the American government found me as a key ally in the Protestant-Catholic unity mission in the United Kingdom that is necessary to dilute the condemnable terrorism and retaliatory military violence threatening our emerging new era of globalized peaceful commerce. The Guadalcanal experience, as my commander John would remind me, simply showed us all the 'thin line' between intelligence...and madness. God bless Northern Ireland...and the 20th Century!"

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)