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1. Gray, The Warriors, 28-29.
Gray reminds us that the human eye is lustful; it craves the novel, the unusual, the spectacular.
War provides more meat to satisfy that lust than any other human activity. The fireworks displays are far longer lasting, and far more sensational, than the most elaborate Fourth of July display. From OP 2 Webster could see "the shells bursting in both friendly and hostile zones of Haguenau and watch the P-47s strafing right and left." At night, the antiaircraft batteries miles behind the line turned their searchlights straight into the sky, so that the reflections from the clouds would illuminate the front. Both sides fired flares whenever an observer called for them; a man caught outside when one went off had to stand motionless until it burned out. Every machine-gun burst sent out tracers that added to the spectacle.
The big artillery shells would set off fires that crackled and flamed and lighted up the countryside. "There's something eerie about a fire in combat," Webster noted. "The huge, bold flames seem so alien and strident in a situation where neither side dares show the tiniest match flame."
War satisfies not only the eye's lust; it can create, even more than the shared rigors of training, a feeling of comradeship. On February 9, Webster wrote his parents, "I am home again." His account of life in OP 2 mentions the dangers endured but concentrates on his feelings toward his fellow squad members. "How does danger break down the barriers of the self and give man an experience of community?" Gray asks. His answer is the "power of union with our fellows. In moments [of danger] many have a vague awareness of how isolated and separate their lives have hitherto been and how much they have missed. . . . With the boundaries of the self expanded, they sense a kinship never known before."2
2. Gray, The Warriors, 43-46.
(Webster and Pvt. Bob Marsh had orders one night to set up the machine-gun on the porch of his building, to provide covering fire for a patrol if needed. They were exposed in such a way that if they fired, a German self-propelled gun directly across the river would spot them without the aid of observers. But they decided that if the patrol was fired upon, they would open up with everything they had, "because the lives of some twenty men might depend on us." Webster, who never volunteered for anything, commented, "This was one of those times where I could see playing the hero even if it meant our death.")
Gray's third "delight" provided by war is delight in destruction. There is no gainsaying that men enjoy watching buildings, vehicles, equipment being destroyed. The crowds that gather in any city when a building is about to be demolished illustrates the point. For the soldier, seeing a building that might be providing shelter to the enemy get blasted out of existence by friendly artillery is a joyous sight. In his World War I diary German soldier Ernst Juenger wrote of "the monstrous desire for annihilation which hovered over the battlefield. ... A neutral observer might have perhaps believed that we were seized by an excess of happiness."3