The Atonement as a Symbol of War's Tragedy

When I lived in Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, I was able twice to visit the war memorial at Mamaev Kurgan. This hill was one of the key bastions in the defence mounted by a city that would not die. Thousands left their lives on the hill's slopes. Films like "Enemy at the Gates" can never come even close to conveying the horror of a city of ruins carpeted by red snow- red from mixing with blood and gore. As just one account, the aunt of a friend was in her mid-twenties when sent to clean up the city. Her hair went completely white with shock.

Though there are many sculptures on Mamaev Kurgan- from heroic soldiers to the enormous Motherland modelled after the Nike of Samothrace- I found none as moving as the depiction of a mother cradling a dead son in her arms.

The idea was a bold one for a Soviet sculptor, as it comes from a traditional Christian genre- the Pietà. A Pietà typically depicts the Virgin Mary holding her son the Christ after He was taken down from the cross. It is a powerful expression of grief which allows one to remember that Christ was human, too. He had family and He had friends. These were real relationships, that cannot be emphasised enough. Yes, He rose triumphantly from the the tomb on the third day, but His death must have shattered His mother's heart.

This is not the first time that Christ's atonement has been used to symbolise the tragedy and devastation that is war. Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy entitled his trilogy of novels depicting the destruction of the old Russian intelligencia in the civil war Khozhdenie Po Mukam, the Russian equivalent of the Latin term Via Dolorosa. This Path of Suffering is the one traversed by Christ whilst He carried the cross.

In English literature we find the atonement used in Kipling's poem, Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane
  In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
  The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass - we used to pass
  Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
  Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
  It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
  I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
  The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
  I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn't pass - it didn't pass
  It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
  Beyond Gethsemane!

Gas was a new horror on the battlefields of the First World War. You could never be quite sure as to where it had fallen, and it could remain stuck to clothing and other items for hours. If your skin became exposed to gas, it would burn and blister horribly, and worse, if it reached your eyes!
My own brief exposure to mustard gas came during my service as a conscript in the IDF. We had to undergo chemical warfare training, involving us entering a small building sprayed with gas. We had to remain there a few seconds before we could don our masks. My experience did not last long at all, and were cleaned up right away, but I'll never forget how sick I felt the remainder of the day, how my skin itched and my eyes burned. It was then that I remembered this poem.
Gas was the cross upon which Kipling's soldiers were crucified. It was the horror that they could not be spared.









In 1918, Kipling lost his son, Jack, at Loos. The body was never found during Kipling's lifetime. A few years after the war, Kipling wrote what I consider his masterpiece- The Gardner.

Helen Turrell raised her nephew, Michael, by herself, until he was called up to the front and killed. When at last his grave has been discovered, she travels to visit it.

"Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundreds of yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few woodenfaced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know that Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers were planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, and, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones - evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: "Who are you looking for?"

"Lieutenant Michael Turrell - my nephew", said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

"Come with me", he said, "and I will show you where your son lies."

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener."

The imagery is that of the Gospels, when Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for the gardner.
Helen Turrell's miracle differs from Mary Magdalene's. There is no empty tomb, the graves are depressingly full, and her illegitimate son has not returned to life, but she has found a miracle nonetheless. The gardner revealed the hidden truth that had crippled her for years, and revealed it gently, out of pure compassion. For once in her life she did not need to pretend, did not need to distance herself, but could give free expression to her sorrow. She could be a mother, not an aunt. This is why she leaves the cemetery believing the man to be Christ.
When combined with love, truth sets us free.

While at first glance the atonement doesn't to have much to do with war, God's greatest suffering and tragedy is a powerful symbol giving expression to the horror and sorrow caused by war.