The Lesson of Sarajevo

Atlanta, GA
November 11, 2018

In the small villages of France hardly a family was spared. Monuments in the centers of most every town record the names of “Nos Heros…Mort Pour La France”…

During repeated visits to Paris, Provence, and the valleys of the Rhône and the Loire during the first few years of this century, I was humbled and mortified by these marble, stone, or metal reminders of an unnecessary, avoidable four-year onslaught that butchered and damned what came to be known as the Lost Generation.

Today marks the centenary of the Armistice that took effect the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month…the merciful end of the war to end all wars. 

Of the monumental catastrophes of the 20th Century, the suicide of the West known as the First World War, mother of the others, was perhaps the worst…if not for its horrific scale then for its malignant scope and pervasive impact.

More British, French, and Italian soldiers died in the First World War than in the second. France suffered over one million casualties in the first four months. By the time the United States intervened, the average life expectancy of a soldier at the front was just 21 days.

Crackpot politicians, jackass utopian fantasy, and both arms of the military-financial complex joined hands with the last refuge of scoundrels to butcher almost 20 million souls, bankrupt the economies that buried them, and consign their heirs to a century of bloodshed, debt, and disillusion. 

Parental hands that in August 1914 embraced their sons as they boarded trains in Leeds, Leipzig, and Lyons resorted over the next four years to nervously clutching cigarettes, quickly unfolding maps, and apprehensively tracing contours of the Marne, Somme, and Rhine. 

Soon thereafter, those fingers would receive telegrams, roll up the maps, uncork whiskey bottles, and clutch black cloth, crosses, and rosary beads.

As much as we are lectured about the “Lessons of Munich” every time some tin-pot waves a sling-shot, we should recall the Lesson of Sarajevo whenever one of our busybody Caesars encourages us not to mind our own business.

Ignorance increases by the square of the distance, in time and space, from the events under contemplation…and he who is unaware of his ignorance will be misled by his knowledge. 

Ignorance flourished, and mis-applied knowledge abounded, prior to and during (and since) the diabolical calamity Europe endured after the Summer of 1914.

Eddie Rickenbacker, commander of the 94th Aero-squadron during the Great War, and eventual founder and chairman of Eastern Airlines afterward, recounts his effort to diminish his ignorance of events the morning the guns fell silent.

He and other commanders learned  the evening of the 10th that an impending Armistice, effective 11a the next morning, would come from talks underway at Compiegne, and that all flights that day would be grounded.

Under pretense of an “engine check”, Rickenbacker asked that his plane be started, and as the sun rose on the 11th he flew surreptitiously toward the Western Front. Low enough to draw German fire, he also could easily make out the distinctive uniforms…and even some faces…of the opposing soldiers still firing from their pestilential trenches.

At the appointed hour the cease fire obtained, and from the air Rickenbacker could see former combatants emerge from their filthy ruts…first tentatively, then enthusiastically, and finally in tearful gratitude…traversing no-man’s land to mingle with and embrace the scarred, tired, hungry, young husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons they had never met, yet who for four years had been told they must kill.

As the men approached each other, Rickenbacker, describing himself as “the only audience member of the greatest show on earth”, saw the artificial animosity melt, the different uniforms merge, and their distinct colors blend into a single mass of universal, joyous…and genuine…humanity.

Their lives, spared yet seared, would never be the same. Nor would their world…or ours.

Knowing death is near would seem to be clarifying. After having to directly confront that specter, things become either very important, or not important at all.

Perspective and gratitude would likely come into sharper relief. Even thinking about the nightmare of the First World War sharpens my profound appreciation for everyone reading this, and my gratitude that none of us have had to endure such a cauldron.

We all have challenges, conflicts, and choices that in the moment seem monumental, are gut-wrenching, and appear both insurmountable and of lasting consequence.

Considering the unspeakable torment of those unfortunate millions whom Armistice Day then spared or now commemorates, we are humbled into realizing that many of our pressing concerns are fleeting…and may not be as important or impactful as we thought.

And perhaps they never were.

JD