As I think I established with my last post, I really like war art. That's why Vonnegut's one paragraph of military action, when the two scouts are killed, really intrigued me. In class we talked about how the past perfect verb conjugation makes it less exciting, and the short declarative sentences almost innocent and childlike. There is one thing we didn't talk about in class that hasn't left my head though. Why is it "three inoffensive bangs" (54)? Two scouts, three shots, the math doesn't add up. From my understanding of military training, soldiers are taught to fire two shots at a target, "double-tapping" them. It is few enough shots that the recoil of the gun doesn't throw off accuracy by very much, but enough that if both are hits the target won't be getting up. For marksmen, for the range that they presumably got to behind the two scouts, one shot apiece would have been sufficient. Depending on who the soldiers were, that's either four or two shots, so the question remains: where does the three come from?
Vonnegut was in the Army, so he would've known what was standard operating procedure, which leads me to the conclusion that the three shots was chosen for a reason. Perhaps it is suggesting that the Germans who kill the scouts aren't real soldiers and haven't had any military training, so that while one of them needs to fire twice (or chooses might be a better word) the other elects to fire only once. This would fit with the makeup of the squad that captures Billy and Roland, with the young boys, Princess, and the old men. Or perhaps the reason for the three shots is that they didn't have enough ammunition/one gun misfired and wasn't operable. This would fit with the description of the rest of Germany, Dresden essentially, being no longer militarily capable. Either way really, it still supports Vonnegut's overall point about the war, that by the time Dresden was bombed the outcome of the war was already decided. It adds to the utter stupidity of the war, that people who have no inclination toward violence are forced into it without even so much as the proper equipment or training, and still expected to succeed for their country.
I have wondered about the three "bangs" instead of two, and this is an interesting and plausible explanation. I had wondered if maybe one of the scouts (waiting in ambush with a finger on the trigger) might've gotten off a shot. But given what we see of the German "soldiers" who capture Billy (part of the same patrol?), the suggestion of some degree of incompetence makes sense.
ReplyDeleteEither way, it's a hideously lonely sentence, as we imagine hearing the "inoffensive"-sounding bangs at a distance, and understanding the truly offensive fact that they represent.