Work in a Modern Society by Jurgen Kocka

Author:Jurgen Kocka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berghahn Books

7

Soldiering and Working: Almost the Same? Reviewing Practices in Industry and the Military in Twentieth-Century Contexts

Alf Lüdtke

A Colonial Moment

The infantry fired steadily and stolidly, without hurry or excitement, for the enemy were far away and the officers careful. Besides, the soldiers were interested in the work and took great pains. But presently the mere physical act became tedious. The tiny figures seen over the slide of the back-sight seemed a little larger but also fewer at each successive volley. The rifles grew hot – so hot that they had to be changed for those of the reserve companies. The Maxim guns exhausted all the water in their jackets, and several had to be refreshed from the water-bottles of the Cameron Highlanders before they could go on with their deadly work. The empty cartridge-cases, tinkling to the ground, formed small but growing heaps beside each man. And all the time out on the plain on the other side bullets were shearing through flesh, smashing and splintering bones; blood spouted from terrible wounds; valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting dust – suffering, despairing, dying.1

A young gentleman and trained cavalry officer drafted this report several weeks after having witnessed this action of British troops in Sudan in 1898. The author was Winston S. Churchill, who participated in one of these colonial wars. In his account, Churchill once again makes visible to the wider public what had never vanished from colonial and imperial politics: the physical annihilation of those who did not bend to the various ‘civilizing missions’ of the agents of the West.

The soldiers Churchill observed at their ‘work’ were professionally trained ‘six-year-old British soldiers’.2 In his view, they fundamentally differed from those ‘boys’ or ‘conscripts’ who would follow ‘their officers in blind ignorance’ and march ‘in a row to their death’ as they staffed the armies on the European continent. With these British troops, however, ‘every man was an intelligent human being who thought for himself, acted for himself, took pride in himself and knew his own mind’. Thus, ‘spontaneity, not mere passive obedience, was the characteristic of their charge’. These soldiers had undergone intensive training on the exercise grounds at home, and most of them had served at various locations in the empire. Churchill therefore saw himself as a witness to the actions of a well-trained body of seasoned experts whose conduct emphasized keeping cool. In this way, the men would stay in control of themselves and of their tools and could continue to cooperate with both comrades and superiors.

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