Of Girls and Goats and Wars

Some weeks back I made a comment on one of the blogs I read. The blog post was looking at the new monument in Tallinn commemorating the Estonian War of Independence. For those of you who don't know, the monument looks like this:




It's designed to look like the Estonian Cross of Liberty, which is one of the highest military honours in the short history of the country of Estonia. However, it also looks suspiciously like other things involving iron crosses. Most of those things weren't so auspicious.

The discussion in the comments had been playing out the debate over whether or not the monument was actually perceived as representing a good thing. Did it look too much like symbols used by the "bad guys" in various other wars?

As part of my "two bits", I restated my belief that the best monuments look like figures - they're easy to anthropomorphise and more interesting to look at. I included the following paragraph:

Blokes riding horses and wielding weapons are always good value, but they've been over used. One day I'd love to see a freedom monument or a victory statue that involves a young girl riding a goat. Whilst making a daisy chain. If that doesn't symbolise freedom, I don't know what does.

Which tickled the fancy of a couple of other commenters, but raised the semi-serious ire of one, who had this to say:

This a monument for a war. War is not a feminine thing! Young girl riding on goat, playing with flowers?? I think the men who were engaged in battle would turn over in their grave, if that was how we commemorated their fight!

Which, in turn, prompted another player to add:

This a monument for a war. War is not a feminine thing! There should be a young man riding on goat, playing with flowers.

Personally, I found the whole exchange hilarious, but I'd like to put forward the following question:

Sure, war is normally an exercise in men doing violent things... but why do they do it? Forget the politics that usually lies behind the war, why do young men - fathers, farmers and the boy you went to school with - go to war? Especially a "War of Independence?" Is it to dress in a uniform, wave around a weapon and feel masculine?

Well, maybe. They're boys, after all. Still, I can't shake the feeling most grandfathers who fought in a War of Independence did it so they could see their children and grandchildren lolling about in the sun without a care in the world - enjoying a peaceful childhood in a free country. So a little girl riding a goat and playing with flowers seems like a perfectly apt monument to such a war. A celebration of what was worth fighting for.

I doubt any war hero worth his salt would "turn over in his grave" for such a thing. More likely, they would feel glad it was all worth it.