Dulce Et Decorum Est

Mandy’s parents want to include the word ‘courageous’ on the headstone.  How can I object?  Meeting with them was excruciating.  Neither of them said so, but I think they blame me, at least to an extent.  And why not?  I blame myself.  I should have stopped her.

Well, it’s easy to say that.  If only I had tried one more time, pushed her a little bit harder… or was I pulling?  Well, whichever it was, I was trying.  But I could never have stopped Mandy from doing anything once her mind was made up.  No one could - not even Mandy herself.  She was what’s generally described as ‘fiercely independent’.  She was a feminist.  Before I met her, I always thought that a feminist was a woman who hated men.  But that had to be wrong.  She didn’t hate me, after all.  We fell in love and rented a flat together.  It was dirt cheap because we were students, but we were so in love it didn’t matter.  I learned from Mandy what feminism really was, and that every other ‘feminist’ I had met was just a female chauvinist giving the rest of them a bad name.

At times, I did wonder if Mandy was a little extreme.  She was certainly passionate.  Her pet hate was the word ‘balls’ being considered synonymous with courage.  One day, I was brave enough to ask her why.

‘Balls!’ she said.  ‘Balls!  Balls!’

I said, ‘Yeah…?’

‘Matt,’ she said.  ‘Who has balls?’

‘Er… men?’

‘Exactly.’

I was studying to be a teacher, and learning about things like league tables and the process of learning to read.  She was studying history.  I still don’t understand why she did it.  She almost always came home angry.

‘Courage is associated with men,’ she said, ‘because men make all the rules.  Well, not so much anymore, I suppose - but it’s always been men who, who, who go to war because women just weren’t allowed.  Men decided women needed protecting, and they cosseted them, so now courage is considered a masculine quality.’

There was no way of knowing at the time, but that was what started it all - and now I can’t even remember what I said to her.  Maybe I pointed out that women were allowed to fight in wars now.  If I did, that makes it even more my fault…  No it doesn’t.  We still would have been watching the news that day, and she still would have had the idea in her head.  She knew better than I did how many women were in the armed forces.  Nothing I could have said or not said then would have made any difference.

‘All men,’ she said.  ‘All of them.’

We were watching footage of British and American soldiers in Iraq.  It wasn’t anything horrific, but I still found it upsetting.  My private wish was - it still is - that fewer and fewer people would decide to join the armed forces until one day there just wasn’t anyone to fight wars.  I know it’s not practical.  If that happened, and our world leaders decided they wanted to fight a war, they’d enlist anyone they could get their hands on.  They wouldn’t go themselves, of course.  They’d be too important to die; they’d just send in their toy soldiers.  God, it’s disgusting.

‘Not all,’ I said.

‘Show me a woman.’

‘Well it’s hard to see from here.’

‘Women are allowed to go out there with them,’ said Mandy.  ‘Why don’t they?  Is it just because it doesn’t occur to them?  We automatically associate war and violence with men.  Maybe women don’t even realise they can volunteer.’

That, I’m almost sure, was when I first smelt the danger.  At any rate, I tried to pull her off the subject.  It was feeble.

‘Let’s watch something else,’ I said.  ‘I think Only Fools and Horses is on in a few minutes.’  Absolutely pathetic.

‘Mmm,’ said Mandy, distractedly, and she cuddled up to me.  It’s only now that I think she might have done it so I couldn’t see her thinking in her face.

It was a few days later that she came home and told me she’d dropped out of university to join the army.  I was, to put it mildly, stunned.  Then I said, ‘What about your degree?  You’re going to be a revolutionary feminist historian.’

Why did I say it?  It was the perfect feed line for her argument.  She said, ‘No one makes history sitting at a desk.’

‘They do,’ I said.

‘Who?  World leaders?  Men appearing on TV and radio telling the little people they should go and fight wars.  Matt, you hate that.’

‘I hate the people who perpetuate war doing that!  This war is nothing to do with you!’  I really believed that she would do it, and I was desperate to talk her round.

She said, ‘To sit in front of the TV with my boyfriend and say I’m not seeing enough women in the footage of the war is hypocritical.’

I thought she was probably right about that, at least, but I didn’t care.  Offering logical and sensible arguments clearly wasn’t working, so I tried pleading with her.  ‘Mandy, please, I love you!  You’ll die!’

She didn’t seem to have an argument to that.  She just said, ‘I’m not going anywhere yet.  I have to be properly trained first.  We don’t have to talk about it now.’

Training.  Good.  I had time to construct an argument - but as the weeks wore on, I had nothing better than, ‘I love you.’  It was selfish, I know - but aren’t we all, when it comes to something as big as losing someone we love?  I was so sure that she’d die, and it was agony because I didn’t believe she really wanted to do it.  She only wanted not to seem a hypocrite.  Personally, I’d rather go through any battle of conscience than a real live battle with real live weapons.  Maybe I’m just not as brave as she was.

I hardly saw anything of her, except in the local newspapers.  My heart stopped when I saw the first article.  Everyone knew.  Part of me had hoped that she would back down when the time finally came - when Iraq looked a hell of a lot closer than a TV screen.  But now that everyone in the surrounding towns knew what she was doing, she would be sure to go through with it.

‘Why did you let them print this?’ I asked.  ‘What if this happened every time a man joined the army and went to fight a war?  Don’t you realise you’re being singled out because you’re a woman?’

I thought that would have her.  But she said, ‘I thought of that.  But it’s a sacrifice I have to make.  How can I expect other women to follow me if they can’t even see me?’

‘How many women have followed you?’ I asked.

‘The article only came out today,’ she said.

I never heard of any local woman reading those articles - her articles - and being spurred into action.  That saddens me.  She wanted so much to make a difference, and if she had… I won’t say maybe it would be worth it.  But maybe, if she lived on in any way and she knew, she would believe it was worth her life.

The time before she went was torturous to me.  I asked her repeatedly, ‘Do you really want to do this, Mandy?  Really?’

Her answer was always the same: ‘I want to make a difference.  I want to help this world to achieve equality.’  She never said that going to war was what she wanted to do.

When our last night together came, I couldn’t believe how the time had gone so quickly when before it had seemed to drag so much.  She wanted to make love, which meant that she was relaxed and happy when I tried again.

‘Don’t go.’

‘I have to.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Go to sleep, darling.’

I feel ashamed that I was able to go to sleep on a night like that.  I was sure I wouldn’t, but I must have slept for a little while, because I was woken by her screams.  I jumped out of bed, pulled on my jeans and ran to her.

She was hunched in the middle of the kitchen floor, screaming.  That sounds wrong, like she was just screaming and screaming like a mad person.  It wasn’t like that.  She was crying, and it was loud, but it was perfectly normal for someone as scared as she must have been.  I ran towards her.  I dropped to my knees and slid the last yard or so, and I grabbed hold of her arms and just held her while she cried.

Finally, she calmed down.  I wondered whether to say anything.  If I told her again not to go, she might be furious.  It might even make her go when she had decided not to.

‘Oh, Matt,’ she said.  She was still crying.  ‘Make me see I have to go.’

I shook my head.  I was the insane one then, just shaking my head frantically.  Then I said, ‘You’re not going.  You can’t go.  You’re terrified.’

‘They’re all terrified,’ she sobbed.  ‘Everyone who does this.  The men get as scared as I am, but they go anyway.  That’s courage, Matt - doing what you’re scared of.’

‘Don’t go,’ I said.  ‘Mandy, for God’s sake, don’t go.’

She didn’t say any more.  She just kept on crying.  Then I cried too.  She seemed in the perfect state to be talked out of it, and I spent the entire night trying to think of the right words.  But there was nothing I hadn’t said.

As the sun came up, Mandy pulled her face out of my chest and said, ‘Shit, what time is it?’

She could have seen the clock if she’d wanted to, but I looked at it for her.  ‘Six.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Mandy, you can’t.’  I held tightly onto her wrists.

‘Matt, don’t.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Let me go.’

‘I’m not letting you go.  Please… Mandy, how can you?  You were screaming!’

‘I’d be a fool if I wasn’t scared,’ she said.

‘You’re a fool to go at all!’ I cried, more loudly than I meant to.  ‘I can’t believe this!  You’re that afraid and you’re still going?’

‘Let me go, Matt.’

She stood up, pulled free of my grip and left me weeping on our kitchen floor.

‘This doesn’t count!’ I yelled.  I had never cried so much - I felt soaked through with my own tears.  ‘You’re not achieving anything!  Men go to war because they want to!  You shouldn’t go just to prove a point - that doesn’t count!’

‘Matt, I’m going.  I’m going to get dressed, and then I’m leaving.’

‘MANDY!’  I must have sounded like a lunatic.  I certainly felt like one.  ‘Mandy, remember Siegfried Sassoon!’  I don’t remember getting up and following her, but I must have done, because by the time I said that I was seeing our bedroom through the tears.  ‘Remember what they make you say at school?  Writing that letter and saying no to the fighting was the bravest thing he did!’

‘They make us say it,’ said Mandy.  ‘It’s bullshit.  He wrote to the fucking newspaper, Matt!  Even he realised it was cowardly, and he went back to the front.’

‘No, no - that was cowardly.  He was afraid of what people would think… Mandy, please, you can’t be that afraid of how it’ll look if you back out.  Mandy…’

‘Do you also remember all those everyone-sucks-but-me poems he wrote about the women they left behind?  “You love us when we’re heroes home on leave…”  Matt, I’m going.  Matt, please don’t cry, you’ll start me off again.’

‘Mandy…’

‘I’ve arranged to keep paying rent by direct debit.’

‘Oh my God, Mandy, fuck the rent… Mandy…’

She kissed me, and she told me she loved me.  I wrapped my arms around her and I cried and cried, and she pushed -

I can’t go on.