White man, black war

by Bruce Moore-King

184 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my habits when entering the home of a new friend is to examine the books and music they have.

I found this on the book shelf of Sarah who teaches at Carlow College, and asked to borrow it.

The book is an account of a white soldier who fought against Zimbabweans in their war for national independence. Although sometimes uneven, it is often fascinating. I could only think of books written by US veterans of Vietnam who came to see the immorality of that war and the willingness of those in power to sacrifice their children (mostly sons) in order to retain their own privilege.

Bruce Moore-King reveals the brutality, racism, greed and hypocrisy of the white rulers in what was then called Rhodesia.

[Bertico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo he leído en inglés y en ocasiones me ha costado, es un inglés bastante antiguo con palabras muy pomposas, pero ha merecido la pena. De los mejores libros que he encontrado en la parte de segunda mano de la Ceci.

Lo narra un soldado blanco de Rodhesia (Zimbabue), y transmite increíblemente cómo se sentía durante y después de la guerra, y cómo fue progresivamente empezando a dudar de los motivos que le habían contado por los que era bueno luchar. También tiene algunas escenas bastante duras.

Well, maybe there were some women and children. I know there were. But you can't stop shooting at terrorists if there are women and children there, because then you'd never win the war.

"And I fought and killed, sometimes I tortured and murdered, often I burnt and destroyed. But we never thought too much about it. By we, I mean those of us on the ground, those of us doing the fighting and killing, those of us being killed. There wasn't any careful ideology presented to us to fight for, not really. Not in the way that the enemy fought for an ideal, a principle. We were very very carefully kept away from such things, such dangerous things as debate and critical thought."

He turns to the girl.

"We were given no opposing ideology, no opposing set of values, no principled reason for fighting.

(…)

It wasn't the effect on the child's mother. It wasn't that child's mangled body or the ridiculousness in death of his new shoes. The horror was that I felt nothing, absolutely nothing for that boy, his mother, or her grief. The horror was that in order to 'preserve the standards', 'maintain civilised rule', 'stop the evils of Communism', in order to do all this, I had to lose my humanity. Totally."

The soldier straightens up.

"I never felt emotion again. Not anger, not fear, not love, not hate. Nothing, nothing to this day. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what nothing feels like?"