I stare out of the train window at the heavy plant. Gosh! This is the front! That military term is used in dispatches when journalists describe the part of the Elka where the work is most intense. And I think back to three weekends ago, when with Ziggy we watched Pacific, the new Hanks/ Spielberg HBO ten-parter about America's war with Japan (1941-45).
Every bit a excellent as Band of Brothers, Pacific is told in forensic detail, a military historian's delight (although both Ziggy and I questioned the greenness of the American tanks and trucks). Seeing the diggers, cranes, pile-drivers, bulldozers, back-hoes, graders and dumpers busy at work on the Elka, I'm somehow brought to mind of the Jeeps, Sherman tanks, DUKWs, Amtraks, deuce-and-halfs, 105mm howitzers and 37mm anti-tank guns that won the Pacific War. And flying overhead into Okęcie airport- the B-29s, C-47s, F6Fs and F4Us.
And I think to myself: why am I more interested in military hardware than in the civil engineering sort? Why do I find the M1A1 carbine, the Garrand rifle and the Browning fifty-cal machine gun infinitely more fascinating than any hand tool or indeed power tool? (By the way, the only tools in our house are to fix my bikes; otherwise, I concur with Hilaire Belloc in his Cautionary Tale, Lord Finchley:
Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself.
It struck him dead:
And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan. )
No, it occurred to me that despite the well-known fact that War is Good for Absolutely Nothing (other than ridding the world of tyrants), I find the hardware of War more appealing to me than the hardware of Construction. Or indeed Gardening (no tools for this in our garage either). Despite the fact that the only things guns do is kill people, the only thing bombs and shells do is destroy buildings.
I keep my fascination with military hardware at the theoretical level only, which is entirely safe. And thus it has been from earliest childhood; books about warplanes, tanks, guns, battleships etc., were the staple of what I grew up with. Being able to distinguish Sherman tanks with cast or welded hulls, VVSS or HVSS suspension or 75mm or 76mm gun is not particularly useful in life, but there it is.
So the question is: why? What determines our preferences, our interests, our hobbies? Our genes? Our upbringing? Or something less tangible?
May I suggest as an answer "a bit of everything"?
ReplyDeleteGenes have a part as, generally speaking, boys are more interested in tanks than are girls. Upbringing also plays a part, certainly in terms of the era in which we grow up. You and I are more interested in tanks than are younger people born further away from the war.
I suppose media is also to blame, far more exposure of war machines than of JCBs on the telly, cinema and in magazines.
Have to say that your own particular case is taken to some extremes in being able to distinguish between welded or cast hulls......but then you seem to have this "train-spotters" eye for detail in all things. ;)
Maybe our storytellers, the scriptwriting community, should seek out the drama in construction. The grands projets as threads in great epic tales: "How Złoty Tarasy came into being - a vision realised".
ReplyDeleteLong may Bob The Builder continue to inspire the children of mankind.
Welded or cast hulls? You can't tell the difference? Easy to see.