John Warwick Brooke , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis tried to watch the latest movie version of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but were put off by the movie maker’s skill in portraying the gore of ground combat; to the point that the keeper said “enough” as he remembered watching an infantry firefight in Korea just down the hill from the observation post that his I & R squad manned.
There were streaking tracers and flares, and as one suspended flare came to gradual illumination, the keeper’s senses interpreted it as a bullet coming directly at him and he dove to the trench bottom to avoid it. That instinctive foolishness of trying to duck a bullet came to symbolize for the keeper the absurdity of young men killing each other at the behest of older men, and it sustained him through the big and little “bullets” that came at him for the duration of his combat tour.
Now, so many years later, it is not all that entertaining to watch the reenacted gore of other young men trying in vain to duck bullets.
It is depressing, particularly since it goes on to this day and is likely to be somehow involved in eventually rendering the planet unlivable–the ultimate “unduckable” bullet.
