Thursday
A couple of weeks ago, someone tweeted out, “Russia doesn’t have an army. It has an armed, uniformed, barbarian horde,” to which Macolm Nance, a former member of the Armed Services who has become an expert on authoritarian skullduggery, tweeted back, “That’s why we call them Orcs.” It was the first time I had heard that particular designation but, the more I read up on Russia’s approach to military conflict, the more apt the allusion appears.
Nance, incidentally, has put his money where his mouth is and is now in Ukraine fighting the Russian Orcs.
One of the military experts that I follow on twitter—I can’t remember which one—recently made the comment that armies that exhibit self-discipline perform far better than armies that don’t. In other words, if your men are raping women, looting stores and stealing washing machines, and executing civilians, they will actually perform less effectively in the field than armies that adhere to a code of conduct. Of course, all armies will have people who commit atrocities, as America knows well, from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to the Abu Ghraib abuse of prisoners during the Iraq War. But with those war crimes, there were some attempts at accountability—not just for humane reasons but because, when members of the armed forces are held to standards, they operate at a higher level.
Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t believe this—that’s why he pardoned a notorious American soldier that a military tribunal had found guilty of killing innocent Iraqi civilians—and Vladimir Putin doesn’t either. In their eyes, the best way to fight is to intimidate through brutality. But sadism will not put steel in one’s spine the way that fighting for one’s freedom will. Russian rapists are proving no match for Ukrainian patriots.
I remember a general observing during the Iraq War that the Geneva Conventions are not for the enemy but for ourselves. While acknowledging that some of the enemies did not observe the conventions, he said Americans still should because it keeps them tethered to their moral bearings. I vaguely remember him invoking Joseph Conrad’s famous novella as he talked about getting lost in one’s inner “heart of darkness.” A code of conduct gives one something to stop the slide.
The Russian army has a long history of atrocities, as a recent article in The Hill reports. These include the slaughter of Prussian civilians in the first year of World War I; the execution of 21,857 prisoners of war, including approximately 10,000 Polish officers, in the infamous Katyn Forest massacre in 1940; the rape of two million German women at the end of World War II; the killing of 1.3 million Afghan civilians during the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan War; and (under Putin) the slaughters of Chechens, Syrian Kurds, and now Ukrainians. In fact, it was accounts of Soviet armed forces that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to come up with Orcs in the first place.
There are two centers of evil in Tolkien’s Middle Earth: Sauron and Saruman. While the trilogy is not to be read as a political allegory, the historical events of the time are clearly influencing Tolkien, with Sauron and his Nazgul having affinities with Hitler and Saruman and his fighting Orcs resembling Stalin and his armies. In other words, applying the Orc label to the Russian invaders of Ukraine is simply going full circle to the source of Tolkien’s imagination.
Tolkien reports getting the word “orc” from Beowulf. His own Orcs are super goblins who call themselves the Uruk-hai, and we get our closest look at them when they capture Merry and Pippin. They have Saruman’s white hand on their shields and an S-rune on their helmets (their version of the Russian Z). When we see them sparring with Sauron’s Mordor goblins about what to do with the captive hobbits. it brings to mind the uneasy Soviet-German alliance that preceded World War II:
‘Aye, we must stick together,’ growled Uglúk. ‘I don’t trust you little swine. You’ve no guts outside your own sties. But for us you’d all have run away. We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We slew the great warrior [Boromir]. We took the prisoners. We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat. We came out of Isengard, and led you here, and we shall lead you back by the way we choose. I am Uglúk. I have spoken.’
‘You have spoken more than enough, Uglúk,’ sneered the evil voice. ‘I wonder how they would like it in Lugbúrz. They might think that Uglúk’s shoulders needed relieving of a swollen head. They might ask where his strange ideas came from. Did they come from Saruman, perhaps? Who does he think he is, setting up on his own with his filthy white badges? They might agree with me, with Grishnákh their trusted messenger; and I Grishnákh say this: Saruman is a fool. and a dirty treacherous fool. But the Great Eye is on him.
‘Swine is it? How do you folk like being called swine by the muck-rakers of a dirty little wizard? It’s orc-flesh they eat, I’ll warrant.’
Although they are fierce fighters, the Uruk-hai don’t have the discipline of the Riders of Rowan who, somewhat like the Ukrainians, know the terrain and know how to inflict maximum damage while minimizing their own losses. Here’s an excerpt from the battle:
[Pippin] saw that riders away eastward were already level with the Orcs, galloping over the plain. The sunset gilded their spears and helmets, and glinted in their pale flowing hair. They were hemming the Orcs in, preventing them from scattering, and driving them along the line of the river….
A few of the riders appeared to be bowmen, skilled at shooting from a running horse. Riding swiftly into range they shot arrows at the Orcs that straggled behind, and several of them fell; then the riders wheeled away out of the range of the answering bows of their enemies, who shot wildly, not daring to halt. This happened many times, and on one occasion arrows fell among the Isengarders. One of them, just in front of Pippin, stumbled and did not get up again.
Night came down without the Riders closing in for battle. Many Orcs had fallen, but fully two hundred remained. In the early darkness the Orcs came to a hillock. The eaves of the forest were very near, probably no more than three furlongs away, but they could go no further. The horsemen had encircled them. A small band disobeyed Uglúk’s command, and ran on towards the forest: only three returned.
Later, having escaped the Orcs, Merry and Pippin watch the end of the battle from afar:
Then with a great cry the Riders charged from the East; the red light gleamed on mail and spear. The Orcs yelled and shot all the arrows that remained to them. The hobbits saw several horsemen fall; but their line held on up the hill and over it, and wheeled round and charged again. Most of the raiders that were left alive then broke and fled, this way and that, pursued one by one to the death.
Later, in the Battle at Helm’s Deep, it will be the men from Rowan–along with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas–who are besieged. I have thought about this battle while watching the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol. Here’s an excerpt:
Brazen trumpets sounded. The enemy surged forward, some against the Deeping Wall, other towards the causeway and the ramp that led up to the Hornburg-gates. There the hugest Orcs were mustered, and the wild men of the Dunland fells. A moment they hesitated and then on they came. The lightning flashed, and blazoned upon every helm and shield the ghastly hand of Isengard was seen: They reached the summit of the rock; they drove towards the gates.
Then at last an answer came: a storm of arrows met them, and a hail of stones. They wavered, broke, and fled back; and then charged again, broke and charged again; and each time, like the incoming sea, they halted at a higher point. Again trumpets rang, and a press of roaring men leaped forth. They held their great shields above them like a roof, while in their midst they bore two trunks of mighty trees. Behind them orc-archers crowded, sending a hail of darts against the bowmen on the walls. They gained the gates. The trees, swung by strong arms, smote the timbers with a rending boom. If any man fell, crushed by a stone hurtling from above, two others sprang to take his place. Again and again the great rams swung and crashed.
Éomer and Aragorn stood together on the Deeping Wall. They heard the roar of voices and the thudding of the rams; and then in a sudden flash of light they beheld the peril of the gates.
‘Come!’ said Aragorn. ‘This is the hour when we draw swords together!’
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the Ukrainians at Mariupol will survive, despite their bravery. There are no tree-like Ents to come to their rescue. I wonder if, in the interludes between fighting, they have conversations resembling the one that Sam has with Frodo when they are expecting to be swallowed up by the erupting Mount Doom after having destroyed the ring:
Slow rivers of fire came down the long slopes towards them. Soon they would be engulfed. A rain of hot ash was falling.
They stood now; and Sam still holding his master’s hand caressed it. He sighed. ‘What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘I wish I could hear it told! Do you think they’ll say: Now comes the story of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom? And then everyone will hush, like we did, when in Rivendell they told us the tale of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel. I wish I could hear it! And I wonder how it will go on after our part.’
If they expel the Russians and reestablish their country, Ukrainians will indeed tell the tale of Mariupol for generations to come. It may be scant consolation for those who are about to die but, as it is for Sam, it’s consolation nonetheless.
Further thought: My friend Sue Schmidt reminded me of this passage from Lord of the Rings. I don’t think Orcs are responsible this time but certain Sauron allies. Still, it’s an example of using atrocities as a psychological strategy:
Soon there was great peril of fire behind the wall, and all who could be spared were busy quelling the flames that sprang up in many places. Then among the greater casts there fell another hail, less ruinous but more horrible. All about the streets and lanes behind the Gate it tumbled down, small round shot that did not burn. But when men ran to learn what it might be, they cried aloud or wept. For the enemy was flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting at Osgiliath, or on the Rammas, or in the fields. They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapeless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain; and all were branded with the foul token of the Lidless Eye. But marred and dishonoured as they were, it often chanced that thus a man would see again the face of someone that he had known, who had walked proudly once in arms, or tilled the fields, or ridden in upon a holiday from the green vales in the hills.
In vain men shook their fists at the pitiless foes that swarmed before the Gate. Curses they heeded not, nor understood the tongues of western men; crying with harsh voices like beasts and carrion-birds. But soon there were few left in Minas Tirith who had the heart to stand up and defy the hosts of Mordor. For yet another weapon, swifter than hunger, the Lord of the Dark Tower had: dread and despair.