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War is hell, from warm beds to cold graves

March 23 2003

John Elder visits Melbourne's St Pauls cathedral and wonders what the congregation is asking of God.

In the cathedral, St Pauls on Flinders Street, lunchtime: Excuse me, madam. I noticed you lighting your candle for peace, and then walk with your head slightly hanging down the aisle to a pew three rows from the front. Where the seven other people scattered here and there at prayer were kneeling or at least hunched forward, you sat very straight with your backpack on and your eyes closed for a full 20 minutes. What exactly were you asking of God?

Forgiveness, among other things, she said.

Her name was Pauline, 47 years old, of Williamstown, recently a grandmother, and wearing the roughknit jumper and sandals of peacenik chic. It hadn't occurred to Pauline that she looked like a hippie. "It's how I always dress when I'm at home," she said.

She'd been at home, watching the war on the television since breakfast, had felt a little ill because of it, and decided to take the train to Flinders Street and light a candle at St Pauls, make her prayers, and possibly join the afternoon's march for peace.

Pauline's burden was that two days before she'd decided the war of Iraq was a righteous one. "Because of the evil things that are done to the people there . . . and I was always the staunch pacifist," she said. "And then it hit me; that it's very easy for me, living in this country, to just sit back and say all the right things . . . and, really, just do nothing."

And so, Pauline had come to ask God to forgive - "or even bless" - her endorsement of the invasion and bombardment now in play. She asked that the war be over quickly, and with little life lost. At the back of the cathedral, near the gift shop, two women were scraping wax from the table where the candles for peace were planted. The door of the church was open so you could see out to Flinders Street where on the footpath, to the side of the entrance, a young woman in plaits and bearing a clipboard was talking very quickly to two young men about America's "real agenda . . . to establish its own seat of power in the Middle East . . . and on the borders of Asia . . . by virtue of its massive occupying army . . ." And so on.

Over at Clocks, the pokies joint in the corner of Flinders Street Station, the armchairs in the little lounge area under the television set were all (unusually) occupied by various men who had abandoned the machines to check out the war. They'd found themselves talking to one another; talking about the rightness of the war and what the war might mean and where it might end. It was as if they'd found some new meaning in their lives, for a little while.

Out on the steps of the station, at the corner opposite the cathedral, an old man stood with his arms up, looking more like a robbery victim than a figure of protest. He was holding a cardboard sign; in chunky letters from a felt-tip pen it read: "We're going home to our warm beds. They're going to their cold graves." His eyes were wide open, as if he'd just suffered a blow. He didn't have anything else to say.

There was a small group of police nearby, on the steps. A couple of others standing across the street, on Swanston Walk outside McDonald's. Nearby, a woman was selling "No War" badges, and telling three teenage schoolkids that they were doing "the right thing" by abandoning their classes to protest against the war.

Suddenly the tinny squawk of the souvenir shop spruikers was lost against the approaching megaphones of the post-lunch peace march. Many union banners, a few hundred voices chanting "bring the troops home", the flashing lights of police cars crawling at the back of the parade.

At the tables on the footpath, people poked at their pasta and their fried plates, regarding the peace march with various degrees of interest. Some were inspired to mutter their feelings about the war, by way of conversation.

Others made faces of annoyance or bemusement, doing their best to remain untouched by this unpleasant business.



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War is hell, from warm beds to cold graves

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