Years after the end of the Great War, a journalist interviews some of its greatest heroes. Veterans Day Tribute.
The Great War ended many years ago, but its effects live on in the ponies who fought and bled on its battlefields. A journalist interviews some of the War's greatest heroes, seeking to know the people behind the legends.
***
Memoirs of My War is written as a tribute to all veterans, but, as this Veterans Day marks the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War One, it is dedicated to the remembrance of those brave souls in particular. This story is a companion story to another military tribute of mine, Flowers of the Forest, but neither are required reading for the other. A brief overview of the "War's Generation" AU (which is canon for both) is provided here for context, but is not required for either.
As this story contains graphic imagery in certain chapters, I am placing a link to the Veteran Crisis line here, as well as links to the national suicide prevention hotline and a list of international hotlines. There is no shame in needing help. In fact, it is courageous to ask.
Interview Excerpt: Colonel Rainbow Dash, Equestrian Air Corps
You want to hear about my first kill? Nah, you don’t wanna hear about that one. I know what you’re expecting – some story about how traumatizing it was, how horrible I felt afterward, how it changed everything for me.
My first kill wasn’t like that. Being an air-fighter isn’t the same as being a ground-pounder. Even at the knife-edge ranges we sometimes got to flying at, you usually don’t actually see the other pony in enough detail to have it screw with you the same way sticking a knife in somepony and seeing what leaks out does. In a dogfight, you’ve got a million other things on your mind. Keeping your SAW Harness from riding up on you. Maintaining wingbeats so that the magic flows over the aerofoil the way you want so you can turn on a bit. Keeping an eye on fuel levels. Wind resistance. Your wingpony’s position. Keeping your goggles from fogging up for Celestia’s sake!
And that’s before the lead starts flying!
Then you gotta worry about putting your guns on target, watching ammo, anticipating the bogie’s next turn, clearing jams, the bogie that just cut across your tail and the six the bullets in your left aerofoil and now the engine’s dying oh Sweet Celestia the engine just died—
Am I talking too fast for you? Well, good. That’s the point. You’ve got so much of that going through your head that when you send a bogie down and you get a flame from his engine, you’re too busy being happy that he’s not shooting at you anymore and worrying about the next guy trying to shoot you to think about the fact that you just killed somepony.
Some of the ponies in my squadron felt different; everypony reacts differently to their first. A lot of ‘em did think about it, if not in the heat of the moment then when we got back groundside. But, no, it never really got to me that way. Not in the air, at least. It’s not that I didn’t care that I was killing, it just… it didn’t get to me. And, hey, I wasn’t complaining. Makes it easier to do my job, right?
No, if you wanna hear about the one that really screwed with me, we gotta get outta the air.
I was a double ace at the time. I’d just picked up my eleventh kill when I caught two rounds straight in the engine. Blasted through the armor like it wasn’t even there.
Now, I love the SAW Harness. I do. These newfangled aeroplanes we’re putting in the sky now just leave me feeling too out of touch with the air, you know? Well, I guess you wouldn’t know, but… take my word for it. They do. I respect the new planes, heck I helped design them, but I miss the days where SAWs were the main force in the air almost as much as I miss the days when we just flew free. But SAWs and fighter planes both have the same basic perks and problems. Perk is that the engine, static aerofoil wings, sights, and other bits let you take full machineguns into the sky and actually move around and aim with them. Main problem, beyond limitations to maneuverability, is that if one of those flying bits gets destroyed, you’re dunked. Pegasus wings sure can’t keep a plane up without the engine, and even a SAW’s just too heavy.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: I always used to whinge that the SAW engines held me back because I could go faster without the rig. And that’s true. I am at least 20% cooler than any chunk of metal, no matter how many eggheads say it’s the best thing in the air. But the real reason I always felt a little nervous putting on the rig was that, if something breaks, there’s one heck of a lot of metal strapped to you spiraling for the ground, possibly on fire. Not a lot of pegasi will admit this, but being strapped to a flaming weight pulling you groundward unable to steer or fly away rates pretty dang high on the List of Ways We Don’t Want to Die.
So, anyway, I’d taken two rounds to the engine and was spiraling out of control on my way to a forceful introduction with the ground. The Gs were keeping me pretty well stuck in my harness and I had to use my hooves and teeth to get out of it since my wings were busy trying to slow my dive. Oh, and the engine was on fire. Did I mention that? I feel like I mentioned… whatever. Point is, I was up a creek, or would have been if I wasn’t so awesome. I managed to rip my way out of the SAW and ditch. I was caught in a pretty bad spinout… Hey! They happen to the best of us! But I managed to make a perfect four-point landing!
…okay, it was a three-point landing.
…
I smacked head-first into a tree and knocked myself out, okay? You happy?! Anypony less radical would have—
You know what, it doesn’t matter. Point is, I was groundside behind enemy lines. I’d lost my sidearm in the crash, so I was down to bare hooves. Friendly lines weren’t that far away, but with bogies still buzzing around upstairs I wasn’t going to risk flying above the treeline. So I was stuck on foot. I started hoofing it back, made some serious ground, hopping up for short flights through the trees where I could but…
The one kinda sucky thing about my color is that it doesn’t really blend with trees well. I had my headcover and jacket on, which were dark enough to help, but even with a little smoke-blackening my tail still kinda stood out. And the crash had attracted some visitors.
Just bad luck one of ‘em found me. Only warning I had was the crack of a rifle shot going wide. Missed me by maybe an inch. I looked over and I saw an earth pony on his hindlegs, fumbling with the bolt-action on his rifle as he tried to chamber another shot.
I’ve mentioned how fast I am, right? Well, I don’t think I can outrun a bullet, but I can sure as heck come close. I was on him before he even had the action back, and I creamed him with a forehoof right here. To the throat. I couldn’t risk him firing again, not just because he might actually hit me, but because he probably wasn’t alone and multiple shots would make it easier to find me. It was a good hit; I actually knocked his helmet off I hit him so hard. He probably didn’t suffer; if he did, it wasn’t long.
…
With his helmet off I got a good look at him.
…
It was just a kid.
Not ‘kid’ like ‘colt,’ you know? But a kid. Couldn’ta been more than fifteen. Maybe sixteen. Not much older’n Scootaloo.
…
He didn’t need to be there. Probably just a conscript. Probably just scared.
…
Thing is, I know I didn’t do anything wrong. He would have killed me if he could have. I had a right to protect my own life and a duty to return to my own lines. I had ponies depending on me; friends I needed to see again; my own life to live. It’s not like I wanted to kill him. I just… didn’t want to die, you know?
Heck, at the time I wasn’t even thinking “I want to live.” I wasn’t even thinking. That’s why they train us so hard; so we can act when there isn’t time to think. It was just like in the air.
Except, you know, this time I could see his face.
Sigh.
It wasn’t the last time I ever killed somepony on the ground. Heck, even if it had been, it wouldn’t have been the last time that I’d killed somepony I was close enough to see; like I said, some of those dogfights got crazy close.
But this was only one that ever really stuck with me in the get-under-your-skin sort of way.
…
I came through the War pretty okay. Mentally, I mean. After all, physically okay is pretty obvious, am I right? Hehe!
… don’t answer that - my husband might kill you.
Anyway, I came through mentally okay. I didn’t suffer shell-shock or… wait… no… that’s not what it’s called anymore. PSD? PTSD, thank you. That was definitely my next guess. I really didn’t suffer PTSD or depression or really any of that. Lots of ponies came through pretty much okay. But that one kill… I… well…
…
You know what? Screw it. If other vets read this interview, they need to know that even somepony as awesome as me needs help sometimes. I had to go to counselling a few times for that one. And, yeah, the shrink and I talked about the War overall, but it was really about that kid. That one really got to me. I’m not ashamed of that. It stays with me. Always will.
And, in a way, I’m glad for that. It reminds me to never inequinize the enemy, whoever they are. I lost a lot of buddies in the War. Wonderbolts suffered over 200% casualties by the end of it. Yeah. That’s the statistic no civvie ever talks about. Not many of the original members were still kicking by the end. Some of the other fliers kinda… lost themselves in that. Started hating the enemy instead of just hating what the enemy did. Sounds like a small thing, but it makes a heck of a difference when it comes to not becoming seriously jacked in the head. Twi always said hate made us like animals and… yeah. It did for a lot of the others. Maybe even worse than animals. And, you know, sometimes I wonder… if I hadn’t killed that guy… felt what I did afterward… maybe I would have become like that too.
I came through the war with my honor intact. Settled down with a stallion. Raised a foal. I don’t think I coulda done that if I’d lost myself. At least, not without some serious rehab first, in which case I never would have met Hurricane and had Hawker, so… yeah. I guess you could say I owe the kid for that. Funny how that works, huh? Killing somepony to save my soul?
Interview Excerpt: Brigadier General Pinkie Pie, Equestrian Army
Seriously? You want to talk about the battles? Where’s the fun in that? I mean, firing a precisely targeted shell from Big Bertha in a rainstorm on an enemy force that’s advancing up a hill three klicks south of your position and threatening to overrun an allied battalion and managing to plant a 155mm shell directly in the middle of the hostile force without getting even a single speck of dirt on your buddies just two meters beyond the blast radius is pretty fun, but the real fun of war isn’t even the war itself. It’s the stuff you do with your friends between the war stuff!
See, lots and lots of soldiers were walking around with frowny faces all the time! And that’s just sad! I mean, yeah, the war is horrible and ponies are dying, and that’s awful. It really is. Even I don’t joke about that. But I did make sure that ponies could keep joking in spite of it! Laughter might not make the war go away, but it does make you able to get up and face the next day.
And you hear some good jokes in the Service. Like the one about the two zebras, the mule, the unicorn, and the bottle of Konik vodka! You see, there are these two zebras and—
…wait… no… Rarity made me Pinkie Promise not to tell that one in front of a reporter.
Crud.
Anyway, it wasn’t just jokes that I used to help ponies smile again. It was pranks, songs, campfire stories, even parties! They thought I couldn’t throw a party with canned rations and moldy bread, but I proved them wrong! Can’t throw a party in the middle of a war my left hoof! The nerve of some ponies! Can you believe some of the other officers tried to stop me? “It’s not professional,” they said. “An officer shouldn’t be fraternizing with the lower ranks,” they said.
Well, I told them if they tried to stop me, they’d soon be single-hoofedly redefining the term live ammunition! Pretty good, huh? I don’t think a lot of them got the joke, though. They just sort of backed away slowly, sweating like crazy as though I’d said something strange.
Anyhoo, Twilight had just made Brigadier at that point, so she up and declared me the 3rd Army’s Morale Officer and fixed that silly little technicality. And it, was, great! I organized dances, led sing-alongs, figured out how to bake cakes from mud that tasted like chocolate (I called them mud pies! Get it? Teehee!), and just had oodles of fun! Ponies told me they’d never laughed so hard in their lives. They told me that they hadn’t felt this happy since the War started. Why, one pony even told me that I reminded him how to laugh! How cool is that?
I even got the prisoners in on it! Now, sure, some ponies were a liiiiiiiiiittle uncomfortable with my holding parties for the prisoners, and it was super awkward that a lot of the POWs acted like they didn’t even know what a party was…
… no… scratch that… they actually didn’t know what a party was… cultural repression by the Ministry of Public Safety and all that… hurghwghathla! Sorry, I get the chills just thinking about that…
But once they saw how much fun it was, they really opened up! Rarity even said something to me about how the Equalists put out a bounty on me because I was convincing so many of their soldiers to defect!
Serves ‘em right for outlawing parties, I say!
And that’s the really beautiful thing you see in war. Not the war itself, but the friends you make there. I made more friends in one year in the military than my whole life up to that point. And I had a lot of friends, so that’s a high bar! And they were all super-duper close friends too! It’s like, you spent one day in a foxhole with somepony and say maybe five words over all the gunfire, and by the end of it, that’s your sister; that’s your brother. Even I didn’t think it was possible to make such close friends with somepony that fast! And as for the ponies who I was already super-duper close with… well… now, it’s like we’re not even six ponies anymore. It’s just… us. No separation. We’re just… us.
It’s a beautiful thing. It really is. How it brings us so close together. And so even when… even when we lose them too soon… sniff… sorry, I’m just… sniff… I’m okay, really, I don’t need, oh, well, thanks for the tissue.
HONK!
Anyway, even when we lose a friend too soon, we can still hold their memory forever in our hearts and pray that they’re looking down on us from a happier place. A place where everypony is that close but without all the killing. And, thinking about that… I can smile. See? I can smile and it isn’t even fake. Because life is beautiful. Other creatures are beautiful. Even in war, life is beautiful.
Interview Excerpt: Big Macintosh, former Sergeant Major, Equestrian Marine Corps
Ain’t much ta tell, really. Bein’ a Marine ain’t much different from bein’ a farmer in a lotta ways. Both gotta plow. Only difference is, one’s through fields, the other’s through barbed wire.
It’s simple. Set objective; make plan; execute; repeat. Keep doin’ that till the job’s done. In an orchard, that means the harvest is done. In a war, that means the enemy’s surrendered. Or they’re all dead. One o’ the two.
Yeah, Ah reckon Ah did my duty. Had some good times. Had some bad ones too. Made more friends than Ah could count. Lost too many of ‘em.
Some ponies call me a ‘hero,’ but Ah’m just a Marine. A Marine’s expected ta do a good job, an’ mah folks didn’t raise us to live by half measures. So Ah did my job the best Ah could.
That don’t make me a hero any more than any other Marine. Ya just do what ya gotta do, Ah reckon.
Interview Excerpt: Foreign Secretary Rarity Belle, former Colonel, Equestrian Army
Have you ever heard the expression, “An army can’t fight on an empty stomach?” Well, it’s much more than empty stomachs that you have to worry about. Ammunition. Armor. Clothes. Fuel. Replacement parts for jeeps, trucks, tanks, SAW Harnesses, machineguns, artillery, and so on and so forth. You don’t really comprehend how much it costs to run a battalion until you have to provide for seventeen. When our M*A*S*H needed plasma for the unending wounded, or Applejack needed phosphorous shells for her tanks, or Rainbow Dash needed fresh spark plugs for her harness, I was the one to acquire them.
And not just the official requisitions, but the more… esoteric requests as well. When Twilight declared Pinkie Pie the 3rd Army’s “Morale Officer,” who do you think created the paperwork necessary to make it official? Me.
How, you ask?
Well, darling, suffice it to say that garments aren’t the only thing I can fabricate.
I’m just thankful that mare never needed my help to acquire her party supplies. How she got them may keep me up at night, but I think I’d sleep even worse if I knew.
It takes a lot of pony charm to keep even a single battalion supplied. As Twilight worked her way up the chain of command, I found myself needing more and more of it. There were never enough bullets to go around, it seemed, and I often had to “scrounge,” as Applejack so coarsely put it, just to keep us in business. Sometimes that meant cutting deals with the other supply officers. Other times it meant manipulating requisition forms to our favor, or calling in markers with other battalions.
And, when none of those worked… let’s just say that I found other options.
But the supplies alone aren’t enough. There are other things that a unit needs to keep running. It needs cooperation from the higher-ups. It needs the support of other units. At times it needs, as distasteful as this is to admit, political and social capital, especially to handle things off the books.
What do I mean by that, you ask? Well, let me give you a purely hypothetical situation. Let’s say that there was a certain superior officer who didn’t like a certain young captain. Let’s call the captain “Twibright Sparkles,” and note that she bears absolutely no similarity to any real-world pony. Now let’s say that this superior office couldn’t command his way out of a sack, had casualty rates that even the Equalists might have been appalled by, and still somehow believed that the sun shined out of his—
Ahem.
Posterior.
Now, darling, if a pony like that were in command and consistently overrode a more competent officer, this Twibright Sparkles for instance, that would be dangerous to the war effort, would it not? It would be nothing less than one’s moral duty to see to it that he could no longer bring death upon our own ponies’ heads, I should think.
So, let us suppose that I might have, in this hypothetical situation, called in some favors, worked a few contacts, scratched a couple backs, and ensured that this officer was reassigned to a desk job counting latrine parts in Canterlot.
Purely hypothetically, of course.
Every pony had a part to play in that war. Twilight was the leader of our Great Crusade. Applejack, her strong right hoof. Rainbow Dash claimed the skies, Pinkie shook the ground, Fluttershy fought the Grim Reaper, and Spike, dear Spike, remained Twilight’s number one assistant. And me? Why, I’m the one who ensured that everypony could do their jobs. The armorer, in a sense. From couturier to armorer; a fitting evolution, wouldn’t you agree?
My role was never as flashy as the others. There’s no glory in being a logistician, after all. But to know that my friends, my soldiers were provided for was all the praise I ever needed.
Interview Excerpt: Duke Golden Crown, former Prime Minister of Equestria
Politics is a slight-of-hoof game. Keep their eyes focused on the show, and they don’t notice the stallion behind the curtain. Before the War, it was a different sort of game. I wined and dined the movers and shakers, hosted auctions, opened galleries, ran galas; I was the master of the social game. True, many thought me a fop, but the disguise worked well. “Fancypants,” they called me, a compliment as much as a fond pejorative. They shook my hoof and did my favors and, thanks to my direction, ran Parliament exactly as Equestria desperately needed them to.
While they were distracted by the show, I made sure that the cogs turned behind the scenes – advantageous trade treaties; a robust industry; expansive urban and rural development; a hardy agriculture; a thriving economy…
… modern weapons.
You think it was an accident that we went from fielding a hoof-full of muzzle-loading rifles on the frontiers to second-generation breech loaders and first-generation lever-actions in time for the War? Or that we had the capacity to develop tanks and SAW Harnesses during the War? No, sir. Those were the result of bargains and deals I made behind closed doors; myself, and other like-minded members of the citizenry and Their Royal Highnesses’ Government who understood just how precarious the peace was. We Crown Loyalists, industry leaders, and nobles who still remembered what our titles stood for. We got our nation ready for the War!
Except… we didn’t. Not really. Nopony is ever really ready for war, I’ve discovered.
When the Equalists came over the border, the rules changed, but the game remained. Politics was still a game of slight-of-hoof, but now it was about convincing the populace that we were winning. Not an easy task in those early days, I can tell you.
A country which lacks the conviction to fight will die. A country which believes the cost is too high will capitulate. Sometimes, this takes the form of surrendering to the enemy utterly, which is an obvious death. Sometimes it means compromising with the enemy, negotiating a temporary peace and praying that the peace holds. This is a subtle death, one which may take many years as you convince yourself that the enemy won’t come back. But the enemy is under no such illusions. They will come back, and then you will die.
The Equalist philosophy is a monstrous one, promising liberty while ultimately being founded upon tyranny. It cannot coexist with a free society; if they meet, one or both must die.
In the opening months of the War, our danger was that of the obvious death – that our nation would be too frightened, to appalled by the bloodshed to fight. Then, once the tide had been turned through immeasurable sacrifice, the danger was in the subtle death – that we’d settle for a half measure and end the War before it was finished, only to fight and lose later.
We had to see it through.
And that meant I had to play a different sort of trick. Keep their eyes off the casualties, and on the victories. Show the sacrifice, but never too much blood. Demonstrate what prize that our soldiers’ lives had bought, and make into martyrs all who were burned upon the pyre of freedom.
I hated it. I hated every bloody minute of it.
Those soldiers were heroes, are heroes. They deserve their accolades. They’ve done more for this country than an old fool like me ever could. They deserved every honor we heaped upon them and more.
But, Heaven, how I wish I hadn’t had to use them like props in my act!
You know what the difference is between ponies like me and ponies like Celestia, Luna, and Twilight? What we have in common, after all, is that we’ve sent thousands, millions even, to their deaths. But what’s different is that, while they had the honor of fighting alongside our brave ponies… I gave speeches. I held rallies. I toasted the soldiers at fundraisers and called for war bonds and blood donations… but I never shared a trench with the stallions and mares I did it for. Never heard the crackle of bullets or felt the rumble of the artillery. I have the blood of countless ponies on my hooves, but not so much as a single speck of mud.
I can’t tell you how low that makes me feel.
It’s funny; before the War, I was “Fancypants.” Socialite. VIP. Fop. During the War I was the “Trumpeter,” who sounded the great clarion cry to battle, while never setting hoof in it. Now, I’m just a washed-up old war-monger; a bloody-minded extremist who sent young ponies to their deaths for political gain, or profits, or rabid nationalism, or any number of other slights they heap upon me. In truth, I’ve had personas placed on me like masks since I first began playing the slight-of-hoof game, to the point that I sometimes wonder if I’ve just become a prop in my own show…
I wonder, sometimes…
…Ah, well! I’ve left the world of slight-of-hoof to ponies younger and better suited to the task than I. Now, I can give my darling wife the attention she deserves and spend time with my children and grandchildren. Let the country remember me as a monster, if it wills. I’ve done my part. Horrible as it was, I played my role well, and saved many times more lives than I was responsible for ending. What ponies think of me matters little in the end. Only what I did means anything.
And, who knows. If I’m lucky, perhaps history will come to remember me kindly.
Interview Excerpt: Captain Fluttershy, Sister of the Ordo Solaris - Chaplain’s Corps, former Medical Officer First Class, Equestrian Army
So, um, you want me to take you through what the Battle of Seaddle was like? Well, if you really want to know about the battle, you should probably talk to Twilight or Rainbow Dash or Applejack or—
Oh, you want to hear about what it was like as a medic? Um… okay. It’s not really… nice. I mean, well… of course it wasn’t nice. It was a war after all. But, well, what I mean to say is… are you sure you really want me to walk you through a day?
Well, okay then. If you think that’d be best.
*Inhale*
Phew!
Okay.
…
Tracers light up the night, the only illumination besides the fires and the explosions. The sky is black – no moon, no stars – only smoke.
Stallions and mares crouch behind whatever makeshift rubble they can arrange into sandbags; sometimes they use the bodies of enemy soldiers. They’re firing as fast as they can chamber rounds, lots of them panicking. Not just the rookies either; veterans too. They’re just firing, thinking that if they stop, that’s when they die. But the enemy’s firing more; it’s like their bullets are trying to chew through the rubble just to get to us.
I huddle in the ditch, shaking, clutching my medical bag. I try to stop the shaking, but I can’t. I don’t just think I’m going to die, I know it. Any minute now a bullet’s gonna rip through my throat and no one’s even gonna hear me scream because I’m gonna die choking on my own blood just like Sergeant Rod and—
“MEDIC!”
I’m moving! Leaping over the bodies of friendlies, some too scared to move, some who’ll never move again! But I’ve got to move, I’ve got to find—
There! Shadow of the bombed-out nursery. Mare. Late teens/early twenties. GSW lower abdomen. Hooves open my medical bag as my wings shift her uniform to get a better look at the wound. Through-and-through, no sign that it clipped an artery. Apply field dressing and painkiller. Safer to move her than to leave her here. Grab her by the scruff and shift farther back in the line.
I sit in the building that I dragged her into for a second. Or an hour. Who knows? I think she’s thanking me. But I can’t stop shaking. I can’t keep doing this, I can’t face—
“MEDIC!”
I’m up! There! On the line! Stallion. Barely. Maybe seventeen with a bad case of foal-face. What’s left of it. Round ripped off half the right side. His buddy holds him down while I stop the bleeding. He passes out from the pain before I get it done. Just as well. I gave the mare my last painkiller. I drag him from the line and wipe some of his blood from my face. He’ll live. Probably.
Sit down for a minute to catch my breath and—
“MEDIC!”
Stallion. Veteran sergeant. Thirties. Artillery. Shrapnel’s lodged by his heart. Can’t pull it out. That’d only kill him faster. He’s asking me if he’s going to die. I lie and tell him no. Then I give him a sugar pill and tell him it’s for the pain. I can see by the look in his eyes that he believes me as he slips away. I pray he’s in a better place—
“Incoming!”
BOOM!
THE SHELL HITS RIGHT ON TOP OF US—
Oh, my, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to knock over your drink. Are you okay? I can stop now, if… oh, you’re good? Well, okay then.
*Inhale*
Phew!
The shell shreds the storefront where the forward machinegunners had set up. We hadn’t been able to pull them out when the Equalists started pushing us back. Ten yards of rubble and corpses between the line and the building; a couple wrecked vehicles and some craters are the only cover. It doesn’t look like there are any survivors in there. But there are. I can feel it.
Somehow, the moan reaches me across the battlefield. Through the gunfire, through the screams, through the carnage, I can hear him. I can hear the pony who needs me.
“Covering fire!”
Flying in a killbox like this is risky, but I have to get there fast. I twist and turn like Rainbow Dash taught me, bolting in an uneven aerial sprint for the machinegun nest. I feel the heat of tracers whizz past, but I don’t stop. I hit the ground full speed and slide through the rubble, bullets kicking off the rock scree around me. I roll with the landing and come to rest a couple yards away from the stallion. Our eyes lock.
He’s scared. Oh, Celestia, he’s scared.
“It’s gonna be alright,” I tell him. “I’m coming to get you. I’m gonna get you home.”
The only cover is the shallow pile of rubble we’re pressed against. I can’t rise from a crawl without getting my head blown off. So I crawl over to him. We lie muzzle to muzzle as I start to work on him. He’s pleading with me, telling me how scared he is. Maybe it’s with words, maybe it’s his eyes. I hear him either way. As much as I can, I make eye contact. “You’re gonna be okay,” I promise. “I’m gonna get you home.” With my hooves and wings I start patching up his many wounds. It’s a miracle he survived the shell. He’s riddled with shrapnel. His chest plate saved his life, but I can’t remove it to fix the damage underneath; it might be all that’s holding him together.
I’ve stabilized him, but he won’t survive long if he stays here. I roll so that my back is to him and hook my legs through his gear so that I’m wearing him like a backpack. Can’t fly back; wouldn’t be fast enough and they’d gun us down. So I’ll have to crawl.
“Medic up! Covering fire!”
Then I crawl.
I hug the ground like a worm, willing myself to sink deeper into the earth. In order to keep to cover I have to swing closer to the enemy line than I would like, but I don’t have a choice. Down into every crater, past every wreck, behind every body. The gravel and debris dig into my underbelly; I feel shards of glass tear into my flesh. But I can’t stop. Not until he’s safe.
The body of a mare blocks my path. What’s left of her anyway. I try not to look into her eyes as I belly crawl through her blood.
I can’t stop to think about that. I can’t look at her. Can’t see her eyes. Can’t think about how afraid I am. Can’t think about his odds of survival. I just have to keep crawling and crawling. One hoof in front of the other. Inch by inch. Almost there. Almost there.
Wait, what? Why is his weight being lifted—
Oh. We made it. They’re trying to get him loose. I fumble with the straps so they can rush him to the stretcher-bearers. I sag against a convenient wall. Somepony offers me a canteen and I drink. I’m not sure I can do much else. I don’t think I can feel my wings. I can barely move.
“MEDIC!”
Let me up! Let me out there! I’ve gotta help! Somepony needs me, I— wha? Another medic is already treating him? Oh. Okay. Well, I guess I can rest. For a while.
Interview Excerpt: Princess Celestia, Diarch of Equestria
Having a dozen centuries’ worth of experience to call upon certainly has its advantages. No pony can ever fully master a skill, after all, but the luxury of taking a few hundred years to hone them has allowed me to excel at statecraft, teaching, diplomacy, speech, negotiation, and so on. Ponies sometimes interpret my seemingly effortless handling of certain crises as nigh-omniscient. This notion is as incorrect as it is embarrassing. In truth, I’ve simply had a great deal of time to practice.
But there are areas where my agelessness has yielded bitter fruit. One such area is warfare.
Do not misunderstand; I am not saying that there are no benefits to a millennium’s experience on the battlefield. After all, the fundamentals of war are immutable. Ponies, and creatures in general, will always fight for the same basic reasons. In every war the same standard considerations apply when motivating a population or army to fight, as well as when forcing one to surrender. The underlying drives of both war and peace echo unchanged across the ages. Only the particulars differ from conflict to conflict.
And it is in these particulars that the problem lies.
They say that the devil’s in the details, and that has certainly been my experience. Intellectually, I knew that this war would be unlike any other. Yet I failed to account for just how different it would be. And, as a result of my mistake, many ponies lost their lives.
When the Equalists invaded, it was decided that I would lead the 1st Army into battle against them while my sister continued to rule from Canterlot. The citizenry needed the reassurance of having one of their princesses present, and, as I was more familiar with modern weaponry than my sister, this was the logical choice. After all, I had ordered the development of the new generation of firearms, been present for their testing, and even done some stress-testing against my magic. Whereas Luna had only a scant few years to learn not only modern weaponry but modern living in general, I’d war-gamed with my generals for the last several decades, concurrent with the development of these new weapons. And, while no other pony was alive who remembered the conflict, I’d fought in the Boar War, the last true war that Equestria had fought on her own soil, where we’d made heavy use of cannons and harquebuses.
I was soon to learn, however, that there was a world of difference between those primitive guns and modern weaponry.
The Boar War might have been fought with guns, but it was far closer to the days of sword and lance than to the Great War. In the old days, the power of an alicorn had been sufficient to turn the tide in a battle. If the enemy general was my equal, or even in some cases if he was my superior, the raw devastation that I could bring to bear and the defensive spells I could conjure were sufficient to offset most any advantage that the enemy might have. More than once I single-hoofedly snatched victory from defeat. In my naiveite, I did not realize that this had changed.
I learned this lesson the hard way at Braying Brook. I wielded the magic of the sun to ravage the Equalist left flank in the hopes of driving them from the battlefield and claiming the hill they held. And my attack was devastating. What I had not accounted for was that it would make my position a target, and that the Equalist artillery was a far cry from the cannons of old.
My magic is powerful, but not limitless. Even with the aid of other unicorns to bolster me, a shield can only do so much against concentrated shelling.
One hundred and fifty-seven ponies of the Third Solar Regiment perished in that barrage for my mistake.
It was not the first time that ponies had died because I’d made a grave error in battle. And, in all likelihood, it won’t be the last. No commander, however skilled, will ever be flawless. If one fights for long enough, the mistakes and the deaths that follow are not an if. They are a when.
At my age, I can safely say that I’ve made more mistakes than any other pony in history.
I do not tell you all this out of any sense of personal hate. As I said, mistakes are inevitable. Even if a general was flawless by some miracle, ponies would still die. That is the nature of war, and the burden of command. As an ageless diarch, it is my burden more than most. I made my peace with this a long time ago.
That day I learned that the world had irreversibly changed; that I could no longer fight as I once had. But my burden, my duty, remained. So I learned, I adapted, and I fought on.
It sounds callous, but a commander cannot allow failure and loss to break her. If it does, then all the deaths accomplish nothing. In order to truly honor the dead, a commander must push on without them. She must turn their sacrifice into victory. She had to make it mean something. Even when it hurts her. Especially when it hurts her. To do any less… that would be truly callous.
Interview Excerpt: Captain Spike Draconis, Equestrian Army
Did you ever do something really stupid as a kid. Like, really, really stupid?
…
Hah! Yeah, okay, that’s pretty stupid. I’ll give you that.
But I got you beat hooves down. You see, I went to the Great War as a baby.
Stupid, right?
What’s that?
Oh heck no, Twilight didn’t want me to go to war! You kidding me? I might have been an adult in pony years by then, a point which I argued quite strenuously, but I was still a baby dragon. And no baby dragon of hers was going to war!
And I get that. I do. I think I even got it at the time. Twilight’s and my relationship has always been… complicated. Sometimes she’s like my mother. Sometimes my sister. Sometimes my boss. But we’ve always been family, and that day she defaulted to mother. There was no way I was gonna fight.
Again, she was right. A baby dragon had no place on the front lines. Even in those early days of the war, before the machineguns; before the SAW rigs; before the tanks and the house-sized artillery; even then it was no place for a child.
But, like most children, I didn’t see that. All I saw was that I was as emotionally mature as many adults, and, if I still had my childish moments, so what? It’s not like plenty of fresh-faced young privates couldn’t say the same.
So, like a child, I lied. I told her I wouldn’t follow her to war. Then I called in some favors with guards I know from back in Canterlot to put me through my own personal boot camp. They thought that I was just trying to emulate my ‘big sister’ I guess. Hehe. I still haven’t told Twilight their names for fear of what she’d do to the poor naïve suckers.
No, I’m not gonna tell you! She’s gonna read this! I’ll wait until they’re good and buried!
Like I was saying, I trained myself up, especially with regards to dispatches, codes, telegraph maintenance, that sort of thing. I told myself that Twilight would be less likely to send me home if I made myself useful as her aide-de-camp. Then, when the Third Army got its marching orders, I followed.
I made good time. After all, I once did the Dragon Migration on foot, and I wasn’t even in shape at the time. So I caught up with them.
Just in time for First Clearwater.
I can see you recognize the name. Good. I’d be depressed if you didn’t know the name of one of the biggest Charlie Foxtrots in Equestrian military history. If having your first battle is like getting your feet wet, this was me getting tossed headlong into a lake. I saw more death in five minutes than I had in the previous twenty-five years. It was like watching the end of the world.
I’ll spare you the full history lesson. Suffice it to say, General Steel Pommel and his crack divisions threw us back with catastrophic losses. If his superiors hadn’t tied his hooves together, he probably would have destroyed the Third Army outright. As it was, some units suffered 50% KIA, and the rest weren’t much better off. Most of the Army was driven off the battlefield within a matter of hours.
Not all, though. No, there was one unlucky battalion and its support elements that got cut off from the rest of the IX Division and was forced to hole up in a forested bluff. Their only support was the artillery they’d managed to drag with them, stragglers from other units who’d stumbled into camp, and the couple squadrons of Air Corps giving them cover. This battalion was the 12th Infantry, and it just so happened to include a quintet of young officer mares.
Yeah. Them. I suppose you could even say that Dash was there too, since the Wonderbolts were flying CAP for us.
When the whole battle started to go sideways, we hadn’t gotten the withdraw order. The telegraph lines had been destroyed by the shelling and the courier had been killed by a sniper. Captain Helm realized the battalion was trapped behind enemy lines and ordered us into the trees, but he was killed during the withdrawal, which dumped the command on the withers of a certain First Lieutenant Twilight Sparkle.
Fortunately for us, Twilight kept her head. She held the lines in order and forced us to fall back slow enough to take our few artillery pieces with us, then had Pinkie and her earth-pounders keep the infantry covered while Applejack organized the most rapid build of an earth-and-wood fortification that I’ve ever seen in my life.
Whenever somepony tells me earth ponies aren’t magic, I smack ‘em.
The first waves of Equalists that came at us were overconfident; Pommel was busy with the rest of the Third Army, so his subordinates had the job of killing us.
They weren’t ready for what Twilight and the girls had waiting for ‘em. It was a massacre.
We bought ourselves some breathing room with that, but we were still in bad shape. The Third Army was too ravaged to come to our rescue and the next closest friendly force, Celestia’s First Army, was a week’s march away. True, Rarity had managed to save most of the supplies, and the Wonderbolts did a great job of keeping the skies clear, but we were still trapped behind enemy lines with no means of communication. Even with the majority of the enemy tied up fighting the Third Army, there were still five times as many bad guys around our makeshift fort as there were friendlies inside.
Or, to put it more bluntly, we were hosed.
It was about then that Twilight found me.
To say that she was furious would be like saying that the sun is kind of important to Celestia. Twilight quite literally burst into flames. And, no, I’m not joking.
Once she’d cooled down (both literally and figuratively), she realized that my being there wasn’t all bad news. For one, it let her update Celestia with my dragonfire. For two, it let her update the Third Army.
How, you ask? Well, I can tell you now that it’s no longer classified. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Twilight could use my dragonfire to reach the princesses, but what wasn’t public knowledge until well after the War ended was that she figured out a way to send messages with my dragonfire to any of the girls, on account of my close bonds with them. This was the battle where she figured that one out.
It wasn’t perfect; Rainbow could get our messages and pass them along to Third Army HQ, but the only way for them to respond was to air drop the letters. Risky, but not impossible in those early days before Triple-A (sorry, Anti-Air Artillery) got fully refined.
Between Twilight, Celestia, and Major General Crasher, we were able to cook up a plan to counter-attack with the two armies simultaneously and rescue the 12th. Only problem was, we had to survive until Celestia could get to us. And this is where the other stupid thing I did comes into play.
What, you didn’t think I was just going to handle dispatches all day, did you? We needed every warm body we had, and it wasn’t like the Equalist artillery was checking for non-combatants anyway.
I helped with Pinkie’s arty, crawling into the guns to clear jams that the ponies were too big to reach. I helped Fluttershy and the other medics clear wounded from the line. I helped run ammo, food, and messages back and forth since I was such a small target. But that’s not the stupid thing.
No, the stupid thing came when the Equalists actually managed to make a hole in the southwest redoubt. Instead of running away like a smart creature, I ran to the hole. I didn’t really have a plan in mind. I wasn’t even armed. Mostly I was just thinking, “Hey, I can breathe fire.”
It was then that we learned an interesting lesson in dragon biology. Stick with me, this is going somewhere.
See, there’s a genetic quirk that dragons have wherein they get what’s called “Growth-Induced Bigness” when their greed is left unchecked. I once grew to the size of a full-grown dragon in the course of a day because my greed got out of control. But this isn’t really growth in the sense of the body maturing; it’s just a temporary size jump.
Turns out there is a way for dragons to permanently grow and age prematurely, though. You know that saying, “War makes us old before our time?” Well, in our case, that’s just literal. Twilight gave it a long, scientific name, but dragons just call it “Warspite.” When a dragon whelp is alone in a field of war for a prolonged time and has to fight to survive, a defense mechanism kicks into its biology and triggers magically accelerated aging.
Long story short, fire is a really awful way to kill somepony, I still have nightmares about that day, and by the end of that battle I was a teenager.
Twilight’s two objections to my following her to war had been that I was a baby and that she didn’t want me to see the violence. Once the dust settled after First Clearwater, neither of those applied. I wasn’t a child anymore. In any sense of the word. So the freshly minted Captain Sparkle allowed me to enlist.
She then promptly put me on KP for six months.
I didn’t care. As long as she didn’t send me home, I didn’t care. I would never have forgiven myself if I’d stayed safely at home while she and the girls fought and killed and risked their lives for me.
…
There are consequences to aging so rapidly. And not just unpleasant ones like Late-Onset Molting (it was gross; don’t ask). Practically speaking, I aged about one hundred and twenty years in less than a tenth the time. That’s the equivalent of me jumping from five to thirty-five. It’s long since stabilized; Warspite slows down once you hit adulthood and eventually just stops entirely, but I’ll still never get those years back.
Ponies sometimes ask me if I feel cheated by this. The answer is no. I never have. And the reason is quite simple.
Because I went to War with them, I grew closer to those mares than I ever thought possible. And not just them, but everypony I shared a trench with. I served my country, my princesses, my kin, in the war that decided the future of everypony I cared about.
That’s worth sacrificing a few years of my life. In fact, it would have been worth sacrificing all of them.
Interview Excerpt: Princess Luna, Diarch of Equestria
I detest this modern era of war.
It is not that I am under any illusions or mistaken nostalgia for the old era of warfare. I’ve heard the opinions of plenty of stallions and mares who win imagined battles from cozy chairs and assert that there was a greater refinement to the older eras of war. Not because of how ponies conducted themselves, mind you, but simply because sword and spear are somehow more elegant than tanks and guns.
This line of thinking is utter folly. Any war will have its nobility and its depravity, regardless of the era. Culture and creed make a far greater impact on the conduct of an army than weapons. After all, shooting somepony can hardly be considered morally inferior to thrusting a blade through somepony’s heart. There were wars wherein there was a greater sense of honor amongst enemies than in the Great War. And there were wars wherein there was less honor as well. The weapons may impact the ease with which we kill one another, but the choice of virtue and vice remains fundamentally in the realm of the soul and the flesh, not fire and steel.
No, the reason I detest this modern era of war is its mechanical nature. Ponies don’t ride to battle as they did in the old days. They charge into a meat grinder.
It used to be that ponies faced an enemy they could see and understand. Flesh against flesh. Now, it feels more like they face merely Juggernaut: a featureless entity of gears and guns that can be neither understood nor killed.
When the War first visited our fair land, I was eager to rain justice upon our foe in blood and steel; to repay them for the atrocities they had committed against us. But Celestia, wisely in retrospect, recognized that my desire to blood our enemy so personally would be a liability on the battlefield. So I remained in Canterlot, to manage affairs at home and ensure that the kingdom rallied behind its bold defenders. But my war was not merely the soft war of politics in those early years. It was also one of minds.
As the Guardian of Dreams, I am not unfamiliar with the devastation that war can wreak upon the mind. Intellectually, I knew that, with the larger armies of today, I would have far more ponies to whom I must minister in the night.
But I… I had not accounted for the horror of it.
What I saw in those ravaged dreamscapes as my ponies were introduced to a new and cruel era of war… even now I shudder at the thought. You of the younger generation only know this modern sort of war, so it is impossible for you to understand what an utter shock it was to our sensibilities. None of us had ever conceived anything like this waking nightmare.
How could we? Before then, it simply did not exist.
Worst of all were the dreams of the prisoners of war. I was not unfamiliar with using my gift to offer succor to the victims of torture. The means by which ponies deliberately inflict pain on each other in prisons have proven to be rather similar from age to age.
But… there were just so many. So many soldiers. So many civilians. So many innocent souls, and among them so many children and I…
…
Ashamed though I am to admit it, there was a part of me that was relieved when the Equalists broke through the lines to threaten Canterlot. Guardian of Dreams or no, there are times when I prefer a tangible enemy.
Know this. When ponies tell you of the terrible wrath of Luna, the princess who threw the Equalists back from the Pelenneigh Fields with such fire and fury that the day was blackened with the smoke of guns, that was merely me venting the pent-up, helpless rage of generation of mothers weeping for lost children. It was the innocent dead of Equestria who carried that day, not I.
…
Most ponies think of the War as something which ended many years ago. But it didn’t. Not for me. As long as there is even one stallion or mare alive who remembers the horrors of that conflict and brings such grief to the land of slumber, my war will continue.
And, as my sister and I do not age… I suppose my Great War will last for a very long time.
Interview Excerpt: Prime Minister Twilight Sparkle, former Field Marshall of Equestria
So, you really want to do this, then? Want to hear how “Love and Guts” feels about the War? What could you ask that isn’t in the news reports; the hundreds of interviews; the wartime correspondence that’s mostly public record at this point and, no, we’re not talking about the ones that aren’t because “Classified” exists for a reason! I’ve written a memoir for Celestia’s sake! Why not just read that?
Whaddaya you mean “It’s too long?!” It’s only nine volumes! Okay, smart aleck, you try condensing a first-hoof account of a frontline soldier rising from First Lieutenant to Field Marshall over the course of a horrific nine-year war in less than nine volumes! And don’t tell me Spark Note did it in one! That guy’s a hack!
No, we’re not related! How is that even releva—
Look, can we just do the interview?
Sigh.
I’m sorry for snapping. That’s not very friendly of me at all. I know you’re just doing your job. It’s just…
I’ve been asked about this so many stinking times since the War and, to be blunt, a lot of interviewers have some sort of political axe to grind. I’m sick of being used as a bludgeon by half the parties and an effigy for burning by the other half. Even the Crown Loyalists and Centrists whom I represent don’t often give me a moment’s peace. I’m not a weapon! I’m just…
Contrary to what my detractors say, I’ve never sought the spotlight at all. When I was Celestia’s student, after I’d become the Bearer of Magic, I only ever wanted to be just another townspony in Ponyville. For the longest time, I legitimately did not understand why ponies were always seeking my advice like I was some sort of sage.
And when the War came I didn’t join up because I wanted glory or fame or power. I joined because my home, my friends, my family, my teacher needed me. I joined because the Elements of Harmony can’t target an enemy army, and because I had the brains and the drive to be a soldier. Equestria needed officers, so I became one. Equestria needed innovative tacticians, so I became one.
…
Equestria needed proficient killers… so I became the most lethal mare this side of the millennium.
…
Let me tell you something; there’s a power that I’ve wielded that most ponies could never even dream of. But the price you pay for it is high. And, if it’s a price that you want to pay in exchange for that power, if the lives that are the currency are something you’ll willingly spend, then you have no bucking business anywhere near that power. This is a burden that should only ever be born unwillingly.
…
Yeah, I have power. Unspeakable power. I admit that. My friends taught me long ago not to hide from what I am. But I have only ever been given it. I have never taken it. And what I’ve been given I’ve only accepted because it was needed of me. When Equestria needed an Element Bearer, that’s what I was. When it needed “Love and Guts,” the infamous Field Marshall, that’s what I was. Now, when Equestria needs a Prime Minister to serve as Celestia’s mouthpiece to the Government… well… here I am.
But do you know where I want to be?
Retired. In Ponyville. Not a Prime Minister, not a Field Marshall, in some ways not even a Bearer. Just a friend. An aunt. A sister. A student. A good pony trying to live out the Way of Harmony in her own modest fashion, trying to make this flawed world just a little more like Heaven. Those are the only distinctions that really matter to me.
Sigh.
And, much as it’s humbling to admit after all my ranting about how much I don’t want all these responsibilities heaped on me… it’s probably thanks to them that I’ve been able to be my best self.
The War brought me closer to my friends than I ever imagined possible. None of the other dangers we faced, not Chrysalis, not Sombra, not Nightmare Moon, not even Discord brought us so close.
I’ve become a truer student of Celestia, and Luna for that matter, now that I’ve led ponies in a state of Total War. Now that I’ve born the burden that once only the ancient ones remembered.
I’ve experienced harmony and friendship in ways I never could have predicted; brought old enemies to peace; formed bonds of family with ponies whose names I barely knew, and deepened the bonds I had with my old friends and family.
I’ve become a better version of myself. I’ve done good, spread Harmony, become somepony worthbeing. And I don’t regret that. Any of that. I just…
I just get tired sometimes. That’s all.
Hehe. But, I suppose, when I really stop to consider it, it’s worth being tired for.
Interview Excerpt: Field Marshall of Equestria Applejack
You know what term Ah hate? “Necessary Evil.” Ponies say it all the time, but there ain’t no such thing. There’s plenty o’ evils what pretend ta be good, an’ plenty o’ goods that look evil at first glance, but there ain’t no “Necessary Evils” in the world. If it’s evil, ya don’t do it. Simple as that. An’ what’s more, ya should never feel good about an evil, no matter how well meanin’ ya were, an’ you should never feel bad for a good, no matter how unpleasant it was.
War’s one o’ those things ponies like ta say is a “Necessary Evil.” Horsepucky. War can be good; war can be evil. Which one it becomes is down to you. You can be a hero; you can be a villain. You can do bad things thinkin’ yer good, an’ good things thinkin’ yer bad, but what ya think don’t make a lick o’ difference to what is. Sometimes ya gotta do some pretty awful things to do good, but bein’ awful don’t make ‘em evil, got me?
Now tyranny on the other hoof… tyranny is evil. ‘cause tyranny’s all about taking away freedom. An’ I don’t mean ‘freedom’ the way most young ponies mean these days – doin’ what you want, how you want, when you want to. That ain’t freedom; that’s license. Real freedom ain’t about freedom from, it’s about freedom for. Freedom ta be the best you that you can be. Freedom ta excel. Freedom ta live yer life ta the fullest. That’s the freedom owed us as an inalienable right. An’ anything that takes that away for any reason, no matter how well-intentioned, is tyranny. And tyranny always leads to a bad end.
Hehe. We saw that with the Equalists, didn’t we? Best of intentions, and all we got was the bloodiest war in history.
So, if’n tyranny’s the real evil, an’ war can be about opposin’ tyranny, well, then war can be a good thing, can’t it? It can be righteous. Holy even. And if yer doin’ a good thing, shouldn’t ya feel good about it?
The fact is, Ah rather enjoyed the War. Don’t get me wrong; Ah ain’t a sadist. Ah take no pleasure in killin’ for its own sake or killin’ for revenger or hate. That’d be evil, plain an’ simple, no matter how righteous yer cause is. Any soldier o’ mine Ah saw gettin’ like that Ah pulled from the line real fast. Ain’t no place fer cruelty in mah Army! That just ain’t right. An’ Ah sure as Celestia don’t take no pleasure in seein’ friends an’ comrades get blown ta bits. Ah may be a warrior, but ya gotta be seriously jacked in the head fer that ta not bother ya.
But, if Ah’m bein’ honest, there’s a certain pleasure in facin’ an enemy four times yer size an’ sending ‘em packing. There’s a satisfaction in a perfect shot with ironsights at three hundred meters. An’ there’s something just bone-deep gratifying ‘bout staring down evil with her brothers- and sisters-in-arms and comin’ out on top. It’s fun in a way. An’ why shouldn’t it be? If ya do somethin’ hard, somethin’ challenging, an’ ya do it right against all odds, that’s a real good feeling, regardless o’ what it is. That’s just pony nature. Only difference is what the challenge is, far as Ah’m concerned. And, for Celestia’s sake, servin’ and protectin’ just feels good. Standin’ up fer ponies feels good. We’re wired that way, an’ there ain’t no reason ta shy away from that.
There’s an honesty to the battlefield, ya know? No politics. No drama. Just you, yer comrades, the enemy, an’ yer own personal fight with good an’ evil. All distractions fall away an’ it’s just down to how you will act. Whether you will be good or evil. Will ya be a warrior or a killer? Will ya master yer fears or be a coward? Will ya show mercy like ya ought to a wounded enemy or give in ta hate? Will ya put yer buddies before yerself? Will ya give yer life fer somethin’ greater? See, the thing about the battlefield is that, when yer that close ta death, it’s pretty darn easy to see what’s really important in life. Everypony should face death at least once ta answer that question.
Because here’s the thing: we can’t escape death. It comes fer us all one day. Great or small, rich or poor, young or old, we can’t escape death. Ponies die around us every day, an’ one day it’ll be our turn. We gotta face that, or else we live our whole lives lyin’ to ourselves. Not everypony needs ta go ta war, but everypony’s gotta face death.
Violence too. That’s a part o’ life. We gotta learn ta live with it, be righteous in it, or else the only violent ponies will be the bullies and the tyrants. Without warriors, how do ya stop an army o’ killers?
Ah’m not a warmonger. Ah like peace as much as the next pony. In fact, Ah think war makes me appreciate peace more, because Ah don’t want to waste a minute of it. Because Ah know exactly what the price o’ that peace was, an’ Ah can’t abide bein’ flippant with such a gift. Too many ponies have given too much fer me ta do anythin’ less than live life ta the fullest.
Ya know, Ah once heard one o’ them Japonese ponies say there was a great swordspony who taught peace and compassion, an’ his student asked him why he studied war when he was so peaceable himself. He replied, “Better a warrior in the garden than a gardener in war.” Ah think there’s a lotta truth ta that.
So Ah’ll happily tend mah garden. Ah got a loving husband, six kids, a dozen grandkids so far, the best friends a pony could ask for, an’ about a hundred acres o’ beautiful orchard ta keep me occupied. An’ if Ah could live out the rest o’ mah days tendin’ that garden till one day, in the Creator’s good time, Ah meet death and go home, Ah’ll do that with a smile on mah face an’ a song in mah heart.
But, if’n duty calls, this old mare’s gonna march back ta war like a good soldier does. Because Ah’m a warrior. An’ Ah’m proud of it.
The Great War in Equestria might rightly be said to bear more resemblance to World War II than to World War I, at least in terms of the reasons for the conflict. After all, the Second World War, much like the Equestria Great War, did not feature a great deal of ambiguity as to who the bad guys were. The Equalists were a regime equally repugnant to the Axis Powers. In fact, the Equestrian Great War was even less complex than World War II, as there was no need to ally with a power equivalent to the Soviets (who were every bit as despicable as the Nazis) in order to win.
And yet, I chose World War I as my basis for the combat of the Equestrian Great War. Why? Well, in order to understand, it is necessary to examine the World Wars more closely.
World War I was a complicated affair. A shifting system of alliances had divided the great European powers (as well as a handful of other great powers like the Ottomans) into two general camps. These two sides would, thanks to the tragic assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, morph into the Allied and Central Powers and wage what was, up to that point, the bloodiest war in human history.
The ironic thing about the War is that it came in the midst of an era of ‘progress.’ Broad conception held that human development in science, technology, industry, and politics would yield a utopian era of glory and prosperity. Those same matters of ‘progress’ would, of course, be the very things which made the war so gruesome – tanks, machineguns, gas, bombers, great imperialist alliances and mighty powers… all the product of ‘progress.’ After the war, a wave of disillusionment swept Europe, leading to a rise in nihilism, a general mistrust of all established systems (the state, the military, the church, industry), and national trends towards either extremism (like the Nazis and the Soviets) or disenfranchisement (as in France). These trends would, in turn, contribute directly to the coming of the second and even bloodier World War.
As if the long term effects were not enough, the war itself lacked a clarity of moral high ground. On the Central side, for instance, the Germans invaded France through the neutral Low Countries – an evil act, to be sure. But, on the Allied side, English soldiers were ordered into suicidal charges for the glory of their generals and French soldiers were shot for cowardice when failing to take impossible positions. Can such actions be called morally superior? True, the Armenian Genocide was perpetrated by the Ottomans under the cover of the war (a genocide which is still denied by most governments, including the United States, by the way), and this has no immoral equivalent on the Allied side. But, in all fairness, the genocide had little to do with the war itself. Still, it must be recognized that the Ottomans might not have been able to commit such vile acts had the war not given them the smoke screen needed to obscure the facts.
Thus, in the end, we find ourselves looking at a war that appears to be merely a tragedy, with no redeeming aspects whatsoever. After all, how could anything good be said to come from such a senseless conflict?
How indeed?
Let us turn our attention to Poland. As a people, the Poles have a longstanding love of personal freedom. They defended their Lithuanian allies against Teutonic expansionism, fought off Russian, Prussian, and Austrian aggression for decades, and always held onto their values and culture in spite of conquest. Despite the fact that they were languishing under the joint oppression of the Prussians, Russians, and Austrians during the American Revolution (a partitioning of their lands which would last three centuries), Polish fighters still traveled across the ocean to fight for the Americans. The founder of the American cavalry was a Polish Hussar, and one of the primary architects of the U.S. victories at Yorktown and Saratoga was a Polish tactician. Poland fought for centuries against oppression, but this great partitioning of their land lasted all the same.
But, with the end of the First World War, Poland was finally freed from its centuries of conquest. In 1919, they successfully fended off the Soviets and rebuilt their long-oppressed nation. For the first time in hundreds of years, they were truly free. And so, when the Nazis and the Soviets invaded in 1939, the Poles were the first to fight Hitler. Even after their country was conquered, they never surrendered. Poles would endure privations from both the Nazis and the Soviets to fight on all fronts. The Home Army was the largest resistance force in Europe, and the only one with a dedicated force specifically for saving Jews. The Polish pilots of the RAF were the best the English fielded in the Battle of Britain. The II Corps endured Russian captivity to become the best Allied troops in the Italian campaign, and even the tiny Polish navy was disproportionately effective. Winston Churchill noted more than once that, without the Poles, England would have lost the Battle of Britain, and the war with it.
Now, it is true that, after the war, the Poles were essentially sold to the Soviets and would endure many more years of captivity. But the fact remains that, had the Poles not been freed at the end of WWI, they would not have been able to play such a pivotal role in WWII.
So there’s one good thing to come from the war.
Let us also consider those thinkers who defied the nihilism, depression, and extremism that followed the war. Men like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who endured the horrors of the trenches and then went on to write about finding joy in the midst of suffering; finding truth and beauty in spite of evil; learning that the common, everyday goodness of ordinary people was greater than even the mightiest of wicked men. Would they have even been able to articulate such concepts without having seen the contrast of good and evil in such a personal way? And, if they had not learned how to express such things, how would that have affected later generations who needed such wisdom?
Perhaps most importantly, let us consider the lesson of the Christmas Truce, when, all along the front, thousands of enemies stood up to share chocolates, sing carols, and celebrate Christmas as one people, regardless of nationality; regardless of war; regardless of bloodshed. Let us consider how much we have in common with those around us. Let us consider the common family of our shared humanity. Let us consider the capacity for us to love our enemies, and see how this promises hope even in the midst of tragedy.
No war shall ever be without its heroes and its villains. Some will have more of one or the other, but all are fought by human beings. People who fight in opposition to evil may still be evil themselves, just as those who fight on the wrong side may still fight with honor and nobility. It is only by our own conduct that we may rightly be judged. We cannot do away with war and violence any more than we can do away with free will. It is an inevitable part of our fallen human nature. But we can change how we act in the midst of war and violence. We can choose to be either the hero or the villain. And we can choose to recognize the humanity of our enemies.
This is why I chose World War I as the analog for the Equestrian Great War – because sometimes we need to see how low we can sink in order to appreciate the contrast of how high we can rise. It is the greatest tragedies which produce the greatest heroes, after all.
I leave you with this final thought on the Great War. Our Great War. In a sense, it is a reflection on all wars. War is a muddy and complex affair. Who was right and who was wrong is sometimes only obvious in hindsight, and even then it is often a matter of debate. But whether a nation or a state was right or wrong doesn’t always translate directly into whether or not the people were right or wrong. There have been a great many people over the years who did their duty, fought, killed, and died, often for causes which did not deserve them. But, though the cause may have been in vain, their lives were not. A man or women who strives to do right and sacrifices to achieve it ought to be honored for their determination, whatever the outcome. After all, doing the best with what is in front of us is the most we meager humans can do. If enough of us recognize what honor really looks like, perhaps more of us will be inspired to live honorably. And, in doing so, we can help make such sacrifices mean something.
It is a blessing I pray for every day.
Eternal rest grant unto them, oh God, and may they rest in peace. Amen.
