A cadre of fighting men, abandoned by their government to four years of prison camps and Marxist indoctrination, followed by a release back into a society that neither knows nor cares about them. Then those same men being recruited to fight a terrorist insurgency in another part of the world while being given free rein as to how to recruit troops and, more importantly, how to fight this new sort of enemy. An enemy that uses civilian targets and human shields, indeed, uses the whole of the people to fight its battles.

A woman, living with a man who doesn’t love her, in abandoned houses that her government doesn’t care for, among people who don’t respect her for what she does, but only for what she can do for them. And these circumstances draw her closer and closer to actions from which there is no return.

Now, imagine all of those people, their hopes and dreams, their need for both life and respect. How they have been shown the hatred and disdain of the ruling class, the indifference of the people around them, a changing world that leaves their ideals behind, and a chance to make a difference in how the world perceives both people suffering at the hands of others and the best ways to deal with a faceless enemy.

The Centurions, by Jean Larteguy, was published in 1960, only a few years after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, where the fabled Para’s of the French army had been abandoned by their government and left in Viet Minh prison camps, but during the middle of the Algerian conflict, which was rapidly spilling into the lives of the French middle class. The author speaks with authority, being a former paratrooper with the Free French Army of WWII and later a war correspondent before becoming a novelist. He saw firsthand how an enemy can be elusive, encompassing both civilians and uniformed troops. And how war is a totaling experience, involving every aspect of life for the combatants. The book reads as a series of anecdotes, unsurprising coming from a former journalist, and while there is a tendency to tell and not show, it is to be forgiven due to the subject matter. We see many characters, whose French names often make them difficult to tell apart, but each is given as a means to tell the story from as many parts of Gallic society as possible. Men, for it is always men, who do not fit into much of the modern world, finding like-minded individuals and working together to solve a problem that said modern world doesn’t really want to solve, at least not in a way that works.

The Good Terrorist, by Dorris Lessing, looks at the same problem, but from the other side of the equation; the people who are being crushed by those same world leaders in the headlong rush to globalization, and the steps they take to stop this. In their eyes, what they are doing is absolutely correct, as far as ideology goes, for they see the government that is supposed to rule over them as having lost all sense of legitimacy in the face of its many atrocities, Or at the very least, its unfitness due to being a conquering power. This is the tale of Alice, a drifter who lives in the main by sponging off of her middle-class parents while living in a London squat. She shows her skills to her co-inhabitants by getting the water and power turned back on and transforming the disgusting abandoned house into a livable home, but later gets drawn by her fellow residents into activities that, while seemingly in support of her growing need to challenge normie culture and values, but later turn out to be immensely destructive.

Lessing grew up in what became Southern Rhodesia, notorious for being a British colony with brutal methods of crushing native culture and rights. She was an anti-nuclear war activist and member of the British Communist Party, leaving only in 1956 after the failed Hungarian uprising. In other words, she is speaking from experience. Her writing here is crisp and styled in a much more naturalistic way, which is no surprise due to the fact she is a Nobel-prize-winning author of great distinction. One of the greatest achievements of this book is that one is never sure if it is satirical, dead honest, or a work of comedy.

These two books cover the ideas of modern warfare, the hell that it encompasses, the perceived need for its struggles, along with the idiocy of its movements, from both sides. When looked at as a pair, the two tales bookend the idea of the struggle for independence in the post-colonial era, how these battles are all-encompassing and do not adhere to the concepts of war in the Western, United Nations ideal. It is very easy to pick a side, depending on one’s priors, as the way the two groups are presented will trigger many emotions about the place and needs of the government and it’s actors in society.

In both books, none of the main characters are presented as either good or evil, but simply as people informed by their life experiences and acting with those thoughts at the forefront of their beliefs. They might or might not be rational to outsiders, but within that smallest possible place, their own minds, they are doing what they feel is the best they can with the limited information they have.

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Right now we are watching a momentous occurrence of a similar nature in the Israeli-Hamas conflict. There is strong support for Israel, while many clearly favor Hamas. Is this support anti-Semitism, or a push for ethnic cleansing? Is Hamas a conquered people rising up against their jailors, as is the right of any oppressed group? Is Israel right in going in to completely crush Hamas, casualties be damned?  Or we can look at it from the lens of the protests on January 6th, 2020.  Were they free people speaking up against the injustices of a government that purports to subservient to them? Or, as others view them, insurrectionists who failed to take over that same government? We see both views on an almost daily basis, and only the politics of the view determines which view is right, and which is wrong.

All of that to say, much as these novels say, that the only right answer is to win and write the history, or to not play at all, and accept fate.

 

The Centurions, 1960, by Jean Larteguy; The Good Terrorist, 1985, by Dorris Lessing.