Tag: J.R.R. Tolkien

Military Helmets

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis & the Inklings, Cartoons with a Message, Likely Useless Trivia, Military Musings3 Comments

War is deadly business. And, if a kingdom or nation hopes to emerge victorious, they are wise to equip their soldiers properly. That’s why this fact, included in today’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not comic, is so shocking.

It’s inconceivable that as the world marched to war in 1914, not a single one of the world powers equipped their troops with steel helmets. Elegant helms that looked superb on the parade ground . . . yes. Elaborate crests that exaggerated height to intimidate the foe . . . of course. Comfortable fabrics that kept the scorching sun off of the scalp . . . certainly.

But steel helmets that might actually spare men from bullet and shrapnel wounds . . . not those.

It’s not like the danger of ballistic wounds caught the Europeans off guard. Muskets had given way to deadly rifles long before. Artillery had advanced to the point where the Germans actually built not one, but two unique weapons: (1) Big Bertha, a huge howitzer that lobbed an eighteen hundred pound shell nearly eight miles, and (2) the Paris Gun, a siege cannon able to fire its shell eighty miles!

As soldiers like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien rallied to the flag and fought the Huns, they would eventually be issued more protective equipment. But it didn’t exist at the war’s outset. And even with it, Lewis was severely wounded in combat. in 1939 he wrote, “My memories of the last war haunted my dreams for years.”

The irony about metal helmets is that even ancient peoples recognized the importance of protecting the skulls of their warriors with the strongest materials available. In my office I have a replica Roman legionary helmet. Trust me, it was capable of saving lives.

Today’s combat helmets are highly advanced, and great effort is made to protect military members from head trauma. Sending them into battle with anything less than the best equipment available should be a crime.

Educational Headaches

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis & the Inklings, Classics Worth Revisiting, Likely Useless Trivia1 Comment

Doing a bit of research about Chinese poetry, I came across a fascinating sentiment that has been reverberated across the centuries since it was first penned by Du Fu in the eighth century.

Du Fu was a prominent poet and a dedicated civil servant who believed in making his kingdom a better place for all. He lived during a tumultuous era and survived several major revolts. (Such turmoil is often said to provide fertile fodder for the poet’s heart.)

At one point he earned the displeasure of the emperor and was demoted to a position as Commissioner of Education. He served diligently but found the duties onerous. Foremost among his complaints was the timeless curse of administrators and teachers:

I am about to scream madly in the office.

Especially when they bring more papers to pile higher on my desk.

It’s true that most of us get buried under greater mounds of paperwork as we advance in our careers . . . but it is a particular shame when teachers (people who are there in the trenches because they love kids) suffocate under stifling piles of trivial record-keeping debris.

If you’re interested in reading a couple of verses composed by Du Fu, you can find them on the internet. Or, you could wait a couple weeks for the release of Curtana 2.2 (the free journal I edit), and read them there.

The Inklings (especially C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien) are exemplars of the tradition of dedicated patriots and poets who devoted their energies to improving our world. And, I doubt you’d need to search very hard to find in their writings an echo of this disaffection for the piles of meaningless work each of them had to wade through during their prolific lives.