Straight Up – I claim absolutely NO originality for this thought. But the more I ponder, the more sense it makes.

Phantom Battlefields and the rewriting of our history brings together several threads that include human memory/family stories/ancestors/myths/wishful/wistful thinking.

It is beyond doubt now that there once existed a Great Empire that covered much of the known and unknown lands of our world.

The Horde/Empire conscripted young men to join the military arm of the expansion. The advance mobile force. They left home at a young age and travelled great distances. They weren’t allowed to marry or to farm the land or to raise a family. Most of them never returned “home.” But they took “home” with them in the form of their own memories and those of their parents and grandparents. To them “home” became some mythical land, lost but never quite forgotten.

These youngsters ended up thousands of miles away from their beginnings; they colonised, integrated, procreated (it’s human nature after all) and articulated their memories.

Time passed. People died. Those original first-hand memories were told and retold, the spirit of the story always alive even when the true truth had been obscured.

A past glory is always a glory. A battle fought and won is always celebrated.

Yes. Henry V of England and Agincourt. It resonates. A chord is struck in our soul. But which battle was this? Which era? What people? What were they fighting to protect?

Which PHANTOM?

My point here is that the EXACT details are often (always?) lost and it is in our nature to search for answers and the security these can give. Today we do those searches quickly, much too easily.

And yet, to my mind, there is a HUGE difference between the genuine human need to belong to History and the DELIBERATE, WICKED intent to steer us all in the wrong direction, let us look the wrong way,

Once again, all of us here and now have just moved beyond the point where a living memory, a first-hand-warts-and-all account exists of the horrors of WWI.

Phantom Battlefields everywhere. Or maybe just the one and only battle that is fought over and over again.

The Battle of Good versus Evil.

 

SIDE NOTE:

OK. The “original” spark for this post was not original…

but the middle and end are my own thoughts and speculations.

See. 

It gets  pretty weird when I think out loud with my fingertips over a keyboard.