We went to see
Her Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment at the Citadel Field House one early
autumn evening. Do you remember? We went together, you with your Scots ancestry
and I with my fondness for all things male.
The band was
rousing and disciplined, but it was the pipe and drum corps we came to hear and
see. And we weren't disappointed. After a warm-up by the band, and with no
pause, the pipers marched onto the field house floor, applause mounting. One
might almost say they flowed onto the floor; they did not so much march as move
like oil to the hum and moan of the bagpipes, haunted by the drummers' muffled
cadence.
The corps and
their instruments seemed the very essence of manliness: the cockiness of their
strut, the Celtic kilts with elaborate ermine codpieces, the bare and knotty
knees, the peacock showiness of flowing shoulder tartans, the unyielding drone
of the pipes. And they epitomized centuries of going to war, their uniforms
binding together those of a kind to intimidate the adversary--vulture feathers
like streaks of blood in black, bobbing head gear, leopard skins slung across
drummers' shoulders. How well trained! How beautifully controlled! What awe
they would inspire in battle!
Ah, the
ancient art of war. The fragile spirit of solitary man girded and inflamed by
the pomp and pageantry of the larger troop, wound like a coiled spring. Intense,
potential power, intent upon victory! Thus seemed those glorious pipers as they
strutted in file across the field house floor.
And then a
horrible imagining came upon me. I saw MODERN WAR, abomination of desolation,
overtake this magnificent manhood. I saw IT (unimpressed by spectacle, or
skill, or courage even…unseeing…unfeeling…uncaring…unknowing) blow a hole in
the field house floor, ripping apart the pageant. Remnants of men flew through
the air, kilts akimbo, uncontrolled, grace and order gone, beyond all symbology
or retrieval. And I knew at once, as I know still, that war is no more mere
sport for men.
[This was published in the College of Charleston's literary magazine, Miscellany, in 1983]