Armageddon in Retrospect

by Kurt Vonnegut

  The facile reply to great groans such as mine is the most hateful of all clichés, “fortunes of war,” and another, “They asked for it. All they understand is force.” Who asked for it? The only thing who understands is force? Believe me, it is not easy to rationalize the stamping out of vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored when gathering up babies in bushel baskets or helping a man dig where he thinks his wife may be buried. Certainly enemy military and industrial installations should have been blown flat, and woe unto those foolish enough to seek shelter near them. But the “Get Tough America” policy, the spirit of revenge, the approbation of all destruction and killing, has earned us a name for obscene brutality, and cost the World the possibility of Germany’s becoming a peaceful and intellectually fruitful nation in anything but the most remote future.

  Our leaders had a carte blanche as to what they might or might not destroy. Their mission was to win the war as quickly as possible, and, while they were admirably trained to do just that, their decisions as to the fate of certain priceless World heirlooms—in one case Dresden—were not always judicious. When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question was asked, “How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the ill-effects in the long run?” Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital center so bitterly needed now—plowed under and salt strewn in the furrows.

  There can be no doubt that the Allies fought on the side of right and the Germans and Japanese on the side of wrong. World War II was fought for near-Holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombings of civilian populations, was blasphemous. That the enemy did it first has nothing to do with the moral problem. What I saw of our air war, as the European conflict neared an end, had the earmarks of being an irrational war for war’s sake. Soft citizens of the American democracy learned to kick a man below the belt and make the bastard scream.

  The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the World’s generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on Earth.

  Great Day

  When I was sixteen folks took me for twenty-five, and one full-growed woman from the city swore I must be thirty. I was big all over—had whiskers like steel wool. I sure wanted to see something besides LuVerne, Indiana, and that ain’t saying Indianapolis would of held me, neither.

  So I lied about my age, and I joined the Army of the World.

  Didn’t nobody cry. There wasn’t no flags, there wasn’t no bands. It wasn’t like in olden times, where a young boy like me’d be going away to maybe get his head blowed off for democracy.

  Wasn’t nobody there at the depot but Ma, and Ma was mad. She thought the Army of the World was just for bums who couldn’t find respectable work nowheres.

  Seems like yesterday, but that was back in the year two thousand and thirty-seven.

  “You keep away from them Zulus,” Ma said.

  “There’s more’n just Zulus in the Army of the World, Ma,” I told her. “There’s folks from ever country there is.”

  But anybody born outside of Floyd County is a Zulu to Ma. “Well, anyways,” she said, “I expect they’ll feed you good, with world taxes as high as they is. And, as long as you’re bound and determined to go off with them Zulus and all, I expect I ought to be glad there ain’t no other armies roaming around, trying to shoot you.”

  “I’ll be keeping the peace, Ma,” I said. “Won’t never be no terrible wars no more, with just one army. Don’t that make you proud?”

  “Makes me proud of what folks done done for peace,” Ma said. “That don’t make me love no army.”

  “It’s a new, high-class kind of army, Ma,” I said. “You ain’t even allowed to curse. And if you don’t go to church regular, you don’t get no dessert.”

  Ma shook her head. “You just remember one thing,” she said. “You just remember you was high-class.” She didn’t kiss me. She shook my hand. “As long as I had you,” she said, “you was.”

  But when I sent Ma a shoulder patch from my first outfit after basic training, I heard she showed it around like it was a picture postcard from God. Wasn’t nothing but a piece of blue felt with a picture of a gold clock stitched in it, and green lightning was coming out of the clock.

  I heard Ma was shooting off her bazoo to everbody about how her boy was in a time-screen company, just like she knowed what a time-screen company was, just like everbody knowed that was the grandest thing in the whole Army of the World.

  Well, we was the first time-screen company and the last one, unless they gets the bugs out of time machines. What we was supposed to do was so secret, we couldn’t even find out what it was till it was too late to go over the hill.

  Captain Poritsky was boss, and he wouldn’t tell us nothing except we should be very proud, since there was only two hundred men on the face of the earth entitled to wear them clocks.

  He use to be a football player at Notre Dame, and he looked like a stack of cannonballs on a courthouse lawn. He use to like to feel hisself all over while he talked to us. He use to like to feel how hard all them cannonballs was.

  He said he was real honored to be leading such a fine body of men on such a important mission. He said we’d find out what the mission was on maneuvers at a place called Château-Thierry in France.

  Sometimes generals would come look at us like we was going to do something sad and beautiful, but didn’t nobody say boo about no time machine.

  When we got to Château-Thierry, everbody was waiting for us. That’s when we found out we was supposed to be something extra-desperate. Everbody wanted to see the killers with the clocks on their sleeves, everbody wanted to see the big show we was going to put on.

  If we looked wild when we got there, we got wilder as time went on. We still couldn’t find out what a time-screen company was supposed to do.

  Wasn’t no use asking.

  “Captain Poritsky, sir,” I said to him, just as respectful as I could be, “I hear we are going to demonstrate some new kind of attack tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Smile like you was happy and proud, soldier!” he said to me. “It’s true!”

  “Captain, sir,” I said, “our platoon done elected me to come ask you if we couldn’t find out now what we is supposed to do. We want to kind of get ready, sir.”

  “Soldier,” Poritsky said, “ever man in that platoon got morale and esprit de corps and three grenades and a rifle and a bayonet and a hundred rounds of ammunition, don’t he?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Soldier,” Poritsky said, “that platoon is ready. And to show you how much faith I got in that platoon, it is going to lead the attack.” He raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, “ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”

  I done it.

  “And to show how much faith I got in you, soldier,” he said, “you are going to be the first man in the first squad in the first platoon.” His eyebrows went up again. “Ain’t you going to say, ‘Thank you, sir’?”

  I done it again.

  “Just pray the scientists is as ready as you are, soldier,” Poritsky said.

  “There’s scientists mixed up in it, sir?” I said.

  “End of interview, soldier,” Poritsky said. “Come to attention, soldier.”

  I done it.

  “Salute,” Poritsky said.

  I done it.

  “For’d harch!” he said.

  Off I went.

  So there I was on the night before the big demonstration, ignorant, ascared, and homesick, on guard duty in a tu
nnel in France. I was on guard with a kid named Earl Sterling from Salt Lake.

  “Scientists is going to help us, eh?” Earl said to me.

  “That’s what he said,” I told him.

  “I’d just as soon of not knowed that much,” Earl said.

  Up above ground a big shell went off, and liked to bust our eardrums. There was a barrage going on up above, like giants walking around, kicking the world apart. They was shells from our guns, of course, playing like they was the enemy, playing like they was sore as hell about something. Everbody was down deep in tunnels, so wasn’t nobody going to get hurt.

  But wasn’t nobody enjoying all that noise but Captain Poritsky, and he was crazy as a bedbug.

  “Simulated this, simulated that,” Earl said. “Them ain’t simulated shells, and I ain’t simulating being ascared of them, neither.”

  “Poritsky says it’s music,” I said.

  “They say this is the way it really was, back in the real wars,” Earl said. “Don’t see how anybody stayed alive.”

  “Holes gives a lot of protection,” I said.

  “But back in the old days, didn’t hardly nobody but generals get down in holes this good,” Earl said. “The soldiers had shallow little things without no roof over ’em. And when the orders came, they had to get out of them holes, and orders like that was coming all the time.”

  “I expect they’d keep close to the ground,” I said.

  “How close can you get to the ground?” Earl wanted to know. “Some places up there the grass is cut down like somebody’d done used a lawn-mower. Ain’t a tree left standing. Big holes everwheres. How come the folks just didn’t go crazy in all them real wars—or quit?”

  “Folks are funny,” I said.

  “Sometimes I don’t think so,” Earl said.

  Another big shell went off, then two little ones—real quick.

  “You seen that Russian company’s collection?” Earl said.

  “Heard about it,” I said.

  “They got close to a hundred skulls,” Earl said. “Got ’em lined up on a shelf like honeydew melons.”

  “Crazy,” I said.

  “Yeah, collecting skulls like that,” Earl said. “But they can’t hardly help but collect ’em. I mean, they can’t hardly dig in any direction and not find skulls and all. Something big must of happened over there.”

  “Something big happened all through here,” I told him.

  “This here’s a very famous battlefield from the World War. This here’s where the Americans whipped the Germans. Poritsky told me.”

  “Two of them skulls got shrapnel in ’em,” Earl said. “You seen them?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Shake ’em, and you can hear the shrapnel rattle around inside,” Earl said. “You can see the holes where the shrapnel went in.”

  “You know what they should ought to do with them poor skulls?” I asked him. “They should ought to get a whole slew of chaplains from ever religion there is. They should ought to give them poor skulls a decent funeral, and bury them someplace where they won’t never be bothered again.”

  “It ain’t like they was people any more,” Earl said.

  “It ain’t like they wasn’t never people,” I said. “They gave up their lives so our fathers and our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers could live. The least we can do is treat their poor bones right.”

  “Yeah, but wasn’t some of them trying to kill our great-great-grandfathers or whoever it was?” Earl said.

  “The Germans thought they was improving things,” I said. “Everbody thought they was improving things. Their hearts was in the right place,” I said. “It’s the thought that counts.”

  The canvas curtain at the top of the tunnel opened up, and Captain Poritsky come down from outside. He was taking his time, like there wasn’t nothing out there worse’n a warm drizzle.

  “Ain’t it kind of dangerous, going out there, sir?” I asked him. He didn’t have to go out there. There was tunnels running from everwheres to everwheres, and wasn’t nobody supposed to go outside while the barrage was on.

  “Ain’t this a rather dangerous profession we picked of our own free will, soldier?” he asked me. He put the back of his hand under my nose, and I seen there was a long cut across it. “Shrapnel!” he said. He grinned, and then he stuck the cut in his mouth and sucked it.

  Then, after he’d drunk enough blood to hold hisself a while, he looked me and Earl up and down. “Soldier,” he said to me, “where’s your bayonet?”

  I felt around my belt. I’d done forgot my bayonet.

  “Soldier, what if the enemy was to all of a sudden drop in?” Poritsky done a dance like he was gathering nuts in May. “‘Sorry, fellows—you wait right here while I go get my bayonet.’ That what you’d say, soldier?” he asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “When the chips are down, a bayonet is a soldier’s best friend,” Poritsky said. “That’s when a professional soldier is happiest, on account of that’s when he gets to close with the enemy. Ain’t that so?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You been collecting skulls, soldier?” Poritsky said.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t hurt you none to take it up,” Poritsky said.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “There’s a reason why ever one of ’em died, soldier,” Poritsky said. “They wasn’t good soldiers! They wasn’t professionals! They made mistakes! They didn’t learn their lessons good enough!”

  “Reckon not, sir,” I said.

  “Maybe you think maneuvers is tough, soldier, but they ain’t near tough enough,” Poritsky said. “If I was in charge, everbody’d be out there taking that bombardment. Only way to get professional outfits is to get ’em blooded.”

  “Blooded, sir?” I said.

  “Get some men killed, so’s the rest can learn!” Poritsky said. “Hell—this ain’t no army! They got so many safety rules and doctors, I ain’t even seen a hangnail for six years. You ain’t going to turn out professionals that way.”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “The professional has seen everthing, and ain’t surprised by nothing,” Poritsky said. “Well, tomorrow, soldier, you’re going to see real soldiering, the likes of which ain’t been seen for a hundred years. Gas! Rolling barrages! Fire fights! Bayonet duels! Hand-to-hand! Ain’t you glad, soldier?”

  “Ain’t I what, sir?” I said.

  “Ain’t you glad?” Poritsky said.

  I looked at Earl, then back at the captain. “Oh, yes, sir,” I said. I shook my head real slow and heavy. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, indeedy-do.”

  When you’re in the Army of the World, with all the fancy new weapons they got, there ain’t but one thing to do. You got to believe what the officers tell you, even if it don’t make sense. And the officers, they got to believe what the scientists tell ’em.

  Things has got that far beyond the common man, and maybe they always was. When a chaplain hollered at us enlisted men about how we got to have great faith that don’t ask no questions, he was carrying coals to Newcastle.

  When Poritsky finally done told us we was going to attack with the help of a time machine, there wasn’t no intelligent ideas a ordinary soldier like me could have. I just set there like a bump on a log, and I looked at the bayonet stud on my rifle. I leaned over, so’s the front of my helmet rested on the muzzle, and I looked at that there bayonet stud like it was a wonder of the world.

  All two hundred of us in the time-screen company was in a big dugout, listening to Poritsky. Wasn’t nobody looking at him. He was just too happy about what was going to happen, feeling hisself all over like he hoped he wasn’t dreaming.

  “Men,” that crazy captain said, “at oh-five-hundred hours the artillery will lay down two lines of flares, two hundred yards apart. Them flares will mark the edges of the beam of the time machine. We will attack between them flares.”

  “Men,” he said, “between t
hem lines of flares it will be today and July eighteenth, nineteen-eighteen, both at the same time.”

  I kissed that bayonet stud. I like the taste of oil and iron in small amounts, but that ain’t encouraging nobody to bottle it.

  “Men,” Poritsky said, “you’re going to see some things out there that’d turn a civilian’s hair white. You’re going to see the Americans counter-attacking the Germans back in olden times at Château-Thierry.” My, he was happy. “Men,” he said, “it’s going to be a slaughterhouse in Hell.”

  I moved my head up and down, so’s my helmet acted like a pump. It pumped air down over my forehead. At a time like that, little things can be extra-nice.

  “Men,” Poritsky said, “I hate to tell soldiers not to be ascared. I hate to tell ’em there ain’t nothing to be ascared of. It’s an insult to ’em. But the scientists tell me nineteen-eighteen can’t do nothing to us, and we can’t do nothing to nineteen-eighteen. We’ll be ghosts to them, and they’ll be ghosts to us. We’ll be walking through them and they’ll be walking through us like we was all smoke.”

  I blowed across the muzzle of my rifle. I didn’t get a tune out of it. Good thing I didn’t, because it would of broke up the meeting.

  “Men,” Poritsky said, “I just wish you could take your chances back in nineteen-eighteen, take your chances with the worst they could throw at you. Them as lived through it would be soldiers in the finest sense of the word.”

  Nobody argued with him.

  “Men,” that great military scientist said, “I reckon you can imagine the effect on our enemy when he sees the battlefield crawling with all them ghosts from nineteen-eighteen. He ain’t going to know what to shoot at.” Poritsky busted out laughing, and it took him a while to pull hisself back together. “Men,” he said, “we’ll be creeping through them ghosts. When we reach the enemy, make him wish to God we was ghosts, too—make him sorry he was ever born.”