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Popular Culture Review
nature military reports took to reflect on society’s need for heroes in conflict.^
Soldiers’ success and survival stories make sense of war for the voyeuristic
public and justify military actions in the moral lens of society.
Another of Thursday’s conscious rejections of memory is her brother’s
participation in the charge and the blame that had been laid on him in the
aftermath, something she is unable to come to terms wdth. In fact, she ended her
engagement to Landen, her brother’s fiiend, when he testified in the hearings
which followed that Anton had, in fact, misled the charge.^® Seeing Landen
again at home rekindled her anger. Although Anton had been blamed for the
results of the charge, Thursday saw the investigation as a chance for “the
military leaders manag[ing] to squirm out of their responsibilities once again
and [her] brother’s name had entered the national memory and the history books
as that of the man who lost the Light Armored Brigade” (187). The
incompetence of the commanders in Thursday’s world certainly mirrors the real
confusion and investigation that followed the disastrous battle of Balaklava
during the Crimean War in our world, highlighting the fiivolousness of
searching for blame in the wake of such loss. Fforde’s parody mocks the way
the infamous charge was handled by blaming the commanders who failed to
show clear leadership rather than the poor man who happened to be following
orders and leading the charge in the field.
The unexpected meeting with Landen ends unpleasantly, and Thursday
goes to visit her brother’s memorial for the first time since she left for London.
Anton’s body has not been recovered:
None of the bodies came home. It was a policy decision. But
many had private memorials. . . [his was an] unsophisticated
grey limestone tablet. . . [that read] Simple and neat. His
name, rank, and the date of the charge. There was another
stone not unlike this one sixteen hundred miles away marking
his grave on the peninsula. Others hadn’t fared so well.
Fourteen of [her] colleagues on the charge that day were still
‘Hmaccounted for.” It was military jargon for “not enough bits
to identify.” (195)
As is characteristic of foreign wars, bodies are often unrecoverable. Although
Rupert Brooke immortalized a soldier’s being laid to rest in a foreign country as
claiming soil “That is forever England,”" in reality the heartache is
compounded for families who are, like Thursday, unable to come to terms with
the loss or grieve in a socially traditional manner.
Thursday is also traumatized by recurring nightmares of the battle, in
wiiich she sees her brother killed again and a g a i n . I n her dreams Thursday
hears: “the crump-crump-crump of the guns and the metallic scream that an