As Much As Things Change. They Stay The Same.
Robert and William fired through loopholes in the walls as hundreds of enemy closed in on the hospital. The rate of fire had been so unrelenting that the barrels began to scorch their hands. Ammunition was waning and the enemy drew closer. As one continued to fire, the other began breaking through the wall with his bare hands in order to drag the patients through to the next room. By this point the enemy had enclosed their position and began making entry to the hospital. Robert Jones defended the doorway with his bayonet, engaging in a ferocious and desperate hand to hand battle in order to protect the extraction of the patients. The doorway was nearly full of dead or wounded enemy by the time he was finished.
The hospital was now engulfed with smoke. The heat of the fire overwhelming. He and William Jones having retrieved six of the casualties, Robert went back for the seventh and final casualty, Sergeant Maxfield, refusing to leave anyone behind. Despite the smoke and heat that tried to beat him back, it didn’t obscure his view as the blades were plunged into Sergeant Maxfield’s body. He witnessed the Zulu frenzy as clear as day. He witnessed Maxfield’s mutilation in plain sight. He watched the life drain from his body on the bed as he looked on helplessly. This was the British Army’s 2nd Battalion, 24th of Foot, defence at Rorkes Drift, or thanks to the 1964 film, what most will simply know as “Zulu”.
Private Robert Jones VC was twenty one years old. He was a hero. He saved lives. He was held up by his colleagues. Awarded the highest gallantry medal the British Army has, the Victoria Cross. Yet nineteen years after this action the muzzle end of a shotgun seemed to make so much sense to him that he took his own life. He had survived an aggressive fire, smoke inhalation, being stabbed four times, shot once, but eventually he succumbed to the deepest wound of the war. His own mind.
His wife told the coroner how his experiences of war came to haunt him at night in the form of nightmares. I’m sure he still smiled at his five children. I’m sure he still loved his wife. I’m sure he laughed with his friends over a beer. I’m sure he sported his four assegai scars with an element of pride. But I’m also sure he never said anything of the mental scars of war. For fear of judgement. Yet judgement still came, just after his death.
Robert Jones’s courage, fortitude, distinguished career and gallantry awards were quickly forgotten. The coroner judged him temporarily insane on the day he borrowed his employers shotgun. He was viewed as taking “the cowards way out”. A British War Hero. Robert was treated with such disdain for losing his battle to the invisible wounds of war that his coffin was forced to enter the churchyard over the wall. Perhaps worst of all is Roberts headstone, deliberately placed facing away from the Church and other headstones, a lasting reminder of the attitude displayed to his struggles and his death. I doubt he was the first to lose his battle and he certainly isn’t the last.
In the time since the Anglo-Zulu War we’ve got better at mental health. I think. Until I start really thinking about what’s changed and what hasn’t. We talk, but usually only once we’ve reached the point of spinning out. We say that people can come forward for help without judgement, before suspending them from their duties. We tell our friends that they can talk to us anytime “just call me”, but when they do, we often cower away from the conversation when faced with the uncomfortable truth. “My friend is in a bad way”. Is it intentional? I think not. Instead I am reminded how most react at news of a casualty or loss of a loved one. Denial. “No it can’t be”. “But we cleared that area how could he get hit?” “We’re home now, how could the war still be effecting them?” We as individuals are trying to cope. If we acknowledge the issue it becomes real. That’s what we shy away from facing.
On the flipside we’ve got better at push ups. Our hashtags of support get evermore creative and our leaders do the “medicine ball challenge”, carrying it around to spread “awareness”. At this point if you were unaware that Veterans and service members are still killing themselves, every single day, let me know which rock you live under.
I poke fun at these sentiments and challenges but that’s all I do. I recognise that by and large they are the well intended actions of good people. The reality however is we’ve got good at saying the right things but fail to live by them. How many of us are guilty of taking part in these challenges but fail to say when something is wrong? In almost all the cases I know, we wait until breaking point. At that point though it’s 50/50, a first step in the pursuit of betterment or a final step like Robert Jones.
We see that friend who we haven’t spoken to in far too long post something on their social media. We know their post isn’t normal. We’re the masters of noticing the abnormal. We can spot a pressure plate in the ground from the discoloured earth that sits above it. But instead of reacting to it like we would on operations, we “like” it and hope that’s all that’s needed. We turn a blind eye and hope that IED doesn’t go off. Perhaps it’s the modern day equivalent of facing the headstone the other way. We shy away from what is probably the only noble fight we’ll ever know. What could be our brother or sisters breaking point, we leave them to figure out which fork in the road to take. Alone.
We are all a little like Robert Jones VC even if we think we’re not. We carry the wounds of war long after we’ve come home. We think we’ve locked it all away deep in the locker. We smile at our children. Love our partners. Enjoy a beer with our friends. Waiting until we reach the fork in the road. Hoping that when we get there we make the right choice, but we won’t talk about it. Instead we’ll bullshit ourselves that there’s some form of nobility for suffering in silence and we’ll bullshit our friends we’re good. Until we can call ourselves out on that bullshit, the reality will always be that as much as things change. They stay the same.