Remembrance Day by way of Metallica

I've been back on the Metallica. The hero of my story is partly based on their bassist, Jason Newsted, who's long struck me as a great guy. A geek in the sense of being SUPER passionate about stuff, and not being afraid to show that passion. He looks like a tough guy...

...but you see him in interview and he's a chatterbox and such a goof that he's totally uncool...

 

which of course makes him uber-cool. He was so passionate about metal that he destroyed his neck and back through constant, massive head banging, and has had many surgeries and years of recovery.

This is to segue into Remembrance Day. When I was at university there was a wall in the old Engineering building showing the names of students killed in WWI. Then I'd go lead a seminar and think OMG these guys are that age. They would have been called up! But they're so little!!

While war does horrible things to civilians, it also does horrible things to soldiers. Even to soldiers who do horrible things to civilians. War not only kills some of the "best and brightest" but it also takes some doofussey, not very deep, maybe from bad homes 18 year olds and gives them ample opportunity to become their worst selves. And then have to live with it, live with knowing that they're capable of rape or torture. Something maybe they would never have found out about themselves, or would have had a chance to outgrow. That's another sort of cruelty.

Here's Metallica's interpretation of the anti-war book Johnny Got His Gun (great high school reading, I recommend.) And you don't need to see the movie cause it's summarized in these 7 minutes!