Merit Coba

When, during the Crimean war, an English cavalry unit frontally charged a Russian line of guns,  and got massacred in the process, the French general Bosquet (witness to this debacle) remarked that ‘ it is magnificent, but it is not war.’.

This quote was on first Lieutenant John Maltowes  mind when sixty two years later, during the ‘Big Push’ of 1916, he was the only one to survive the slaughter of his platoon on a  death trap field swept by German machine guns and mortar fire. This, he wrote in his biography, is not magnificent: it is war.

More than eighty years later the United Nations Inspector  Bernard Jansen remembered both lines when he concluded in his report about the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995, that this is neither magnificent nor is it war.

Two hundreds years later a statue of Earth was unveiled by a randomly selected child to celebrate a century of peace undisturbed by organized bloodshed. The quote from the French general was on the base of the statue, but slightly altered. It read: ‘it is magnificent: it knows not war.’

note: This story is dedicated to Sandor. He dedicated himself to bring peace and understanding in this world. I heard his health was failing and people were asked to help him with positive thoughts.. well I don’t know much about that, but I wrote this story.

Note: changed the last entry from 1000 years to 200 years because i felt this did not fit with Sandor.