When a mother describes the daily care of babies and toddlers there’s an expression used to capture the experience: she might say she is “in the trenches” or other mothers might describe her as such. It’s become so common as to pass without question that there is some similarity between the experience of raising small children and being engaged in trench warfare.
That’s a remarkable assertion.
There are some understandable parallels and a reason why the expression has become so accepted. Like all great adventure stories, the adventure of raising children and engaging in battle consist of little more for the bottom tier on a daily basis than a struggle to maintain basic necessities: sleep and food.
Rations and ammunition are hauled to the trenches as boxes of diapers and jugs of milk are lugged from the back of the minivan up a steep flight of stairs in the townhouse. Sleep comes in fits and spurts, often taken in unusual places with no assurance of a long, restful repose on a bed made with clean sheets.
There is also a tedium to the grunt work of advancing on the battlefield and caring for hearth and home. Long stretches of boredom are punctuated by episodes of frantic, panic-inducing activity.
Yet, surely, that is about where the analogy ends. Is the life-giving, civilizing activity of having and raising children akin to the death-driven grind of terror and filth that is life in the trenches? We’ve become sloppy in our thinking if we blindly accept and perpetuate an analogy that is, at bottom, grotesque and unwarranted.
If we want to know what life in the trenches is like, one account worth reading is that of E.B. Sledge, Marine combat veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II. Sledge, the son of a medical doctor and academic mother, draws on a wealth of observation to construct a detailed account of life as an enlisted man, cannon fodder in a global conflict that inflicted an unimaginable toll. His book, “With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa” is, as historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote in his introduction to the republication in this century, is “the finest literary account to emerge about the Pacific war.”
Hanson notes, “Unlike the case of many postwar memoirs, the accuracy of Sledge’s facts has never been called into question. He does not magnify his own achievements or those of his own Company K.”
The who’s who of Hollywood adapted Sledge’s memoir into the television series “The Pacific.” While cinematically satisfying, if you go for extreme gore and simplistic story lines, it was evident from seeing snippets of the series that Sledge’s story suffered from the lack of inner dialogue and character development. The supporting cast seems like Millennials playing dress up with socially bizarre and stiff young soldiers who seem nothing like the warm and close-knit units of soldiers you read about in personal accounts of the war.
Even more disturbingly, absent internal dialogue, moments faithfully adapted from the memoir come across as strange and inexplicable. You get no sense of the civility bred into Sledge the young man thrown into what he call the “meat grinder” of war. He emerged, with great difficulty, because of an interior formation and external discipline that few of us can equal in the present age and environment.
Raised on a literary appreciation for the American founding and the legacies of honor in battle that form the Western cannon, Sledge experienced war for what it is, writing, “War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste… The only redeeming factors were my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other – and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.”
For people who idly theorize about combat, the reality is stunning. A group of young men, boys really—most no more than 18—were given startling predictions. An officer calmly told the boys ahead of landing on the beaches of Okinawa that they anticipated 80-85 percent casualties. For the comfortable civilian, such a forecast would lead to immediate attempts at self-preservation. To the cohesive Marine unit, orders were followed without question.
Perhaps even more than the acute terror of ever-present death, the pervasive stench and filth are hard to comprehend. Sledge makes a point of noting how inadequate was their hygiene and the conditions on the frontlines and remarks that it is odd not to find note of these realities in other war memoirs.
“The Old Breed” to whom Sledge refers are the Marines who served in World War I, the originators of trench warfare as we think of it today. In many ways, the feats of the boys in Pacific combat to withstand an enemy determined to outlast them was due to the example of combat veterans, whether of “the Old Breed” or of the previous engagements throughout the Pacific.
Here there is some minor parallel to be drawn with motherhood. The physical and emotional intensity of becoming a mother is one that can perhaps only be understood by a woman who has already done it. The need for new mothers to find mentors, friends, and role models further along cannot be understated.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing elements of war to the far-off civilian is the dehumanization, not just in response to the horrors surrounding soldiers but also from the lack of individuality. The first question asked of an enlisted man being considered for command is whether he could knowingly send men to their deaths. Most people will answer, understandably, that they could not. Sledge, huddled with a small group of Marines in a remote outpost comes to the realization that he is expendable, a non-essential soldier placed in potential harm’s way. Once again, the power of the espirit de corps is the only antidote to this crushing realization.
If our homes have become places where we feel like strangers, we have gone astray. For many people, this is not a personal fault but a reflection of a society of fractured families and isolation. But the essence of home and family is individual, the place where you are known and loved for who you are.
One outcome, certainly not the primary one, of mothering is nurturing children with a wealth of beauty to sustain them in times of darkness. Sledge writes frequently of the kindness of a superior or fellow Marine who encouraged him. While trudging through mud in the relentless rain, an officer brought Sledge out of his deathly malaise with talk of home, of other times and places, bringing life and light to a time of endless death and despair.
In a sense, the cultivation of Sledge’s interior life, which makes him most susceptible to suffering is also the inner core of his being from which he draws strength to survive. He writes, “As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Insensibility’ puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war.” Yet, that reflective mind that suffered almost unbearably in war was the same with which, decades later, Sledge could revisit his experiences and bring meaning to them.
Perhaps it’s time to retire the notion that mothers are “in the trenches” raising small children. We lose sight of what war is actually like and we encourage mothers to see the minor trials of life with babies as real suffering. If the situation of being a mother is so trying to a woman, there is a serious disorder that needs to be addressed with interior reflection and outside aid. Compared to the reality of the trenches, a mother’s quiet life is the bliss to which soldiers wish to return, not a place of suffering in its own right.
As much as we might like to think we will abolish war or as much as we might want to glorify it as a place for women to relish their total equality, war is a brutal waste, a scourge that will not be ended until the Parousia.
Sledge wrote simply and accurately, “Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically. Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country – as my comrades did.”
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