A Close Look at DMZ part 10: The Forgotten Borough

"Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?"

As antiwar slogans go that's a good one--and a compelling idea. Leaders declare wars and leave the fighting of them to ordinary people who had no say in the starting of them. History offers a few occasions where the rank and file tried something like this, one of better examples being 1914's Christmas Truce during World War I. Obviously this isn't appropriate for every war; German and French soldiers breaking bread during World War II is impossible to imagine. But a lot of wars (maybe most wars?) are not existential. So what if the conflict in the DMZ is just such a war?

The following contains spoilers for DMZ 35-36.

What's a Little Ricin Between Friends?

"The Island" opens with Matty, cut loose from Liberty News and dropped by Parco Delgado, on his way to do some reporting that he hopes he call sell to someone. To that end he's taking a trip to Staten Island, the borough with the highest concentration of United States troops--troops that aren't doing anything.

The angle Matty intends to take on the story is what it's like to be in a front line unit that never fights. In the process he discovers that the base's commanding officer runs a very loose operation. Under the theory that once the war ends both sides have to come together again as a united people, the C.O. made an arrangement with the Free States forces across the river to come together as comrades instead of fight each other as enemies.

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It's an insane arrangement. At least that's what Matty thinks at first. His opinion starts to change when he watches Free States soldiers arrive. The two sides exchange booze and movies with each other. They drink together. They carry on like the best of friends. But a few reservations stick with Matty as he watches soldiers swap weapons and code words--something that the leadership on both sides would consider treason and which could come back to bite both sides.

The arrangement between the two sides completely falls apart while Matty is on the island. The U.S. commander officer loses a vial of ricin (a souvenir from a previous posting) and he immediately suspects the Free States soldiers. The U.S. troops drop the friendly attitude and take the Free States troops prisoner. The base C.O.'s grasp of the situation deteriorates as it drags on and he turns to torture (which his men aren't very good at). Eventually one of the U.S. soldiers makes an appeal to the Free States soldiers offering amnesty if the ricin is turned over. When it is, despite the offer of amnesty, the commanding officer shoots the offender in the head. The two sides end up in a standoff, the U.S. commander calls off the truce, and Matty is sent away before he can witness anything.

DMZ 36

Kristian Donaldson returns to the series to handle the art duties for this two-parter. While I quite enjoyed his previous work in the series, the softer lines and lighter ink usage on the characters here feel out of place in a story of false hope and betrayal. A large part of this is because Donaldson's characters aren't terribly emotive, and while that works in relatively quiet issues, for a story with a tough question that turns on a sudden change of behavior on one side and total shock on the other it doesn't really uplift the material.

The Impossible Question

As DMZ story arcs go, "The Island" is rather straightforward. Putting the country back together, more in a personal sense than a territorial one, is a fraught process that the United States has struggled with before.

DMZ 35

The Confederate States did not fight to the last man in the Civil War. They didn't engage in a guerilla war (even though Confederate States president Jefferson Davis wanted them to). General Lee, and ultimately all the commanding generals in the field, surrendered to Union forces. Lee, in future years, would even speak positively of the country's reunification. Throughout the war President Lincoln recognized the danger to reconciliation if he was too punitive, so he set low bars for the states' readmittance. Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, worked hard to safeguard the new rights written into the constitution and pushed for liberal minded politicians that could contribute to rebuilding the south to be elected President Grant supported congress, maintaining troops in the region. Reconstruction efforts came to an abrupt end with the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes who, among other things, finally withdrew Union troops from the south. While we don't know what would have happened had reconstruction continued during Hayes's presidency, we do know that the end of it resulted in structural backsliding with segregation and poverty as well as cultural friction that continues to this day.

All of this is a long winded way of saying that the commander's concern, in general, is a valid one. And his bottom-up solution is novel. Does it matter what the generals in charge say if the soldiers refuse to fight for them? In Matty's estimation this is the way to solve the problem. Soldiers stop fighting--war ends. But as we see at the end the truce only exists so long as the base's commanding officer is willing to let it. In that context he's effectively the general and his people fight when he tells them to (they're quick to turn on their Free States "friends" when told to).

This turn of events brings back to mind the quote we started with: "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" These are all troops that, from what Matty tells us, have never fought each other. They falsify reports and requisitions. Both sides cover for each other. It begs the question of when ordinary people who end up as soldiers in a military conflict, no matter their intentions, split into an "us versus them" dynamic. The Christmas Truce in 1914 happened five months into the war but even with that early expression of common humanity the two sides went on to butcher each other for years with little reservation.

Matty's departure from Staten Island means we're left not knowing how the situation between the two sides is resolved, and that ambiguity brings us back to where the story began: how do two sides that each see themselves as the real Americans learn to live together again? I'm not entirely sure we figured it out in 1865, and while Brian Wood raises the question in "The Island", I think he knew that there was no answer.

Credits

Brian Wood: writer

Kristian Donaldson: art

Jeromy Cox: colors

Jared K. Fletcher: letters

For an index of all Close Look at DMZ entries, jump back to the landing page here, and for an issue-by-issue commentary check out Twitter @theroncouch #BWDMZ.

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