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April 21, 2006

A Soldier’s Pay

During the worst of the worst slaughter of World War I in 1917 the French army was in such disarray and misery that it mutinied against the command of their officer corps. This is bad indeed if you’re an invaded state in the middle of a war. The thinking of the French government was that his sort of thing must be put down immediately, decisively, and ruthlessly too.

But what to do? If you gather up all the mutineers (some 25,000 men) and hang or imprison them all as units, then you are eviscerating your own force; if you only go after the ringleaders you may find yourself in the same situation again soon. What the French brass decided on was a death lottery; every seventh member of the enlisted force in a mutinous unit was sent to the firing squad. So if you survived the mutiny, its aftermath, and the war, you were home free. Or so it seemed at the time anyhow.

According to this article I was sent (via Kathy Fischer) it appears that today’s soldiers are in sorta/kinda the same boat. If they survive their current tour and aren’t seriously injured or unhinged mentally, a lot of them walk away with some serious money. A lot more serious than most would get working at the Dairy Queen in some small town in Texas or hustling on the street in Los Angeles or doing day labor in Newark anyhow. In my old stomping grounds around Ft. Riley (Kansas, USA) the entire local economy is principally based around getting as much as possible of whatever largesse a grateful nation bestows upon our honored veterans.

I haven’t consulted Google to see what neo-con chickenhawk and Classicist professor Victor Davis Hanson has to say about how the ancient Greek warriors he study’s blew their booty and swag upon their return from war lately, but I would imagine that soldiers, then and now, aren’t that much different. And so it goes.
And more is the pity too. And so, as a cynic once noted, "[The] past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes." True that.

Posted by Ali Massoud at April 21, 2006 01:49 AM

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