A Fable

In exchange for victories or acts of bravery, soldiers are given medals. These medals are symbols of supposedly glorious achievements, meant to be worn with pride by those who earned them. As well as the enlisted men, the officers also win medals for successful campaigns they led. At the beginning of the war, when many men entered into the military for the first time, these medals were proud achievements. The characters still hold on to the medals they won in early battles, such as the First Battle of the Somme. Gradually, however, the appeal of these medals began to fade. The glory of war, as represented by the medals, gave way to the reality of life in the trenches. For the enlisted men, the gleaming medals contrasted with the grim, dirty life in the trenches. The medals on the breasts of their officers, who lived in barracks far behind the front lines, become symbols of resentment and the building Class War which is emerging throughout the trenches, led by the corporal and his disciples.

While the medals are supposed to represent glorious and hard-fought victories, however, they also function as painful reminders of everything that has been ventured and lost. After four years of fighting, the French, German, and British troops have moved back and forth over the same territory without achieving much at all. At various times, the Germans have occupied a place, only to lose it to the French, only to gain it back again. As the war rages on, these medals come to appear as symbols of trauma for the enlisted men. Each medal represents a brutal battle or a friend lost. At the same time, the enlisted men are still stationed in the same location as before. They can hold their medal and observe the same piece of ground where they earned their medals. The contrast between the destroyed countryside, littered with bodies, and the inadequacy of the medal symbolizes why the corporal’s message is so appealing. The men are exhausted. They are tired of fighting and dying, they are sick of risking everything for nothing but small, inconsequential medals. These seemingly worthless medals no longer function as symbols of glory, but as symbols of the meaninglessness of war. They have achieved nothing but death and medals, so each medal is a timely reminder of their desire to find a way out of their bleak situation. For the enlisted men, the medals have a new function. They serve as a physical item onto which they can project their resentment. The rage and the fury which are felt toward those in charge are now directed at the meaningless trinkets which are handed out after every battle.

As the war draws to a close, the maimed runner seeks out the corporal’s family and collects the dead man’s medal. To the runner, the medal is a bitterly ironic symbol of a failed idea. The executed man tried and failed to change the war and the world. The medal, won during the early days of the war, represents a brighter, more optimistic time which the runner now believes must be used for good. Rather than bury it with the corporal or leave it to lay in the back of a closet, however, he wishes to use the medal in a symbolic manner. He interrupts the funeral of the marshal by throwing the corporal’s medal at the dead man’s coffin. The hurled medal is a symbolic rebuke of the mythology of the glorious general, a symbolic reminder that the man executed his own son to continue a brutal war. However, the runner is ignored and the medal is lost. As such, the medal becomes a symbol of the civilian population’s desire to ignore reality and to believe in the myth of the marshal as a good, honorable man.