Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

Inner Strength: Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War: Then and Today

                                                                           The Face of War: Then and Today

        Do we, as comfortable, isolated Americans, realize the true horror and devastation of war? Leaders who place their political agendas above the lives of the common people should be held accountable for the war crimes they commit!  "War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond telling or imagining" (Gellhorn 2). These words from foreign correspondent Martha Gellhorn in her 1959 Introduction to The Face of War (1936) provide an overview  to the horrors she faced during the wars she covered in Spain, Finland, and  China; in Germany, Poland, Italy and Russia during World  War II; the war in Java; the Vietnam War; the Six Day War; and the wars of Central America  and aptly apply to the circumstances between Russia and the Ukraine today.  The dangers of totalitarianism are subtle and ever-present. As Hannah Arendt observed  "It has been frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them . . . Practically speaking, it will make little difference whether totalitarian movements adopt the pattern of Nazism or Bolshevism, organize the masses the masses in the name of race  or class, pretend to follow the laws of life and nature or of dialectics and economics" (The Origins of Totalitarianism 312-313).

          One of the greatest, if not the greatest war correspondent, Gellhorn traces her emotional transformation as she witnesses the crimes and designs of powerful men destroy lives and futures of good, hard-working people in every land (1). In short stories about her travels, the author describes the irony,  faith, suffering,  humor, and inner strength of these individuals; and their individual approaches to the uncertainties of life and its dire consequences. This paper examines  a handful of those indelible impressions. In her Introduction, Gellhorn also avers that war caused her to lose faith the press, and grief over those innocent people who had no choice but to witness its lies and deception (1). Throughout the  book, the author uses graphic imagery and details to depict the struggle of these helpless victims in their  courageous attempts to rebuild their homes, lives, and dreams from the indescribable carnage of war. In her opening chapter entitled "The War with Spain," Gellhorn describes how she and many others were at first sympathetic with the Germans following their defeat , but shortly thereafter, she clearly no longer held that view. According to Gellhorn, "Being sorry for the defeated Germans was a condition of mind of many people, after both wars; I had it then. Also I was a pacifist and it interfered with my principles to use my eyes. By 1936, no amount of clinging to principles helped me; I saw what these bullying Nazi louts were like and were up to" (14). She carried with her a letter as a special correspondent from Collier's in Spain (15). She called herself a "tourist of wars" because she traveled from one battle to another, yet was not killed in the trenches as were many of the soldiers in France, or wounded severely, but was lucky enough to survive the war, even in Madrid,  where they were "fighting against European fascism" (15-16). Gellhorn expresses her view that western democracies have two basic obligations: first, to preserve their image by assisting other democratic governments; and two, to defeat dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini (17). For fifteen days she and all of Madrid had waited for the shelling to begin and end (20). One man told her not to worry because one "can only die once" (20). Shells whizzed and landed all around them, and there was nothing any one could do, no place to hide, no hope of escape (22). Buildings and roads were devastated by huge bomb-created craters  in places where earlier that day citizens enjoyed their morning coffee and newspaper (20-21). Gellhorn uses the image of a young boy dying in the street near her to evoke the sense of absurdity and futility of war. According to Gellhorn, "A small piece of twisted steel, hot and very sharp, sprays off from the shell; it takes the little boy in the throat." The old woman  who watched him cross road for the last time "stands there,holding the hand of the dead child, looking at him stupidly, not saying anything" (23).  At the Palace Hotel, Gellhorn met many of the wounded as she walked in the   space once designed for reading but now was the operating room (24).  There actors performed plays to raise funds for the hospital (25),much like the play enacted in Renoir's The Grand Illusion. Despite machine guns roaring each night, a  desperate food shortage (42), and loved ones far way fighting on the front, these people remained calm and hopeful, with "a kind of faith which makes courage and a fine future" (26). Gellhorn asks the question, "How can I explain that you feel safe at this war, knowing that the people around you are good people? (36). The author alludes to the pride of the soldiers in the Spanish Republican Army, and the pride of mothers like Mrs. Hernandez whose two sons are both fighting in the war. "You must be brave like all the others." she says (41). The author sadly describes the  bandaged children in the hospitals that "looked like toys until you came closer--tiny white figures propped upon pillows, swathed in bandages, the little pale faces showing, the great black eyes staring at you, the small hands playing over the sheets" (42). All of them suffered from  war-inflicted wounds (43). She then describes the proud Spanish mothers and daughters working the munitions factories where they made explosives for the soldiers  of their Republic, while bombs howled and whistled overhead (47-49).