NO more war!

I was not going to write any more about war in my column; this commentary on the world of entrepreneurs. I thought, it was no place to discuss damned destruction. Entrepreneurs are about building,  not destroying.

Yet the rocketing of maternity hospitals, the shelling of refugees and the killing of women and children in Ukraine made me sick to my guts. When that happens, I usually grab for my pen.

The waste of war; we think we are a maturing world with our globalised market and satellite communication. The Russian invasion of Ukraine screws the idea of a better world into the face of mankind like a broken bottle.

I was moved to tearsby the harrowing pictures coming out of Ukraine. In many of them, angry unarmed citizens confronted Russian soldiers on the streets.

These pictures brought back  sad and terrifying memories, for me, of years of covering  conflict in Africa.

How many times did wemarch with  poor Zimbabweans, Angolans, Malawians and Zambians in their capitals to report on them standing defiantly  before the guns and gas of authority? These protests often ended in violence and destruction,the Angolan war dragged on for decades and sucked the life out of a generation.

I tried to shed a little light with our TV camera on the nasty  war, but for the most part the world has ignored a lot of blood and turmoil in Africa“We’ve had a heavy day in Bosnia.” Just one refusal to a story from Angola of people risking death by hanging on the wings of planes, as they took off, in the vain hope of escaping the fighting.

“It’s another skinny baby story,” came back another, more shameful, reply when I filed a harrowing  story about poor infants starving to death in the fighting in Angola. I can hear their fading, painful, tears now. Those who have seen, heard and smelt war will never, ever, want to see it again.

So, what do I think of this bitter harvest of history repeated itself? There, I run out of words and turn to those of a soldier priest who dodged bullets in the trenches and is buried about 20 minutes’ walk from where I am writing this now and probably spinning in his grave.

His name was Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican priest,  who started out as a big supporter of World War One. He joined the British Army, as a chaplain, so he could share the hardships of the men in the front line as well as minister to them.

Kennedy ended up seeing war as unmitigated evil. He became an anti-war activist fighting for the rights of the poor .

I leave you with his words wish I had written 25 years ago. I dedicate it to the dead of Ukraine and Russia and those who  perish in all wars, including my great uncle Jack who died before he had lived, aged 16, in 1915.

 

“Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,

Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,

Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,

Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,

Waste of Blood and waste of Tears,

Waste of Youth’s most precious years,

Waste of ways the Saints have trod,

Waste of Glory, waste of God –War!”

“Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy.”