Thank you. No trench warfare, although the Nazgul attacks during the siege of Minas Tirith must surely be Tolkien's narrativising of heavy bombardment. That must have took some coming back from.
As for some of the other men in this story, I was thinking of this bit in The Return of the King, as the Army of the West marches on the Black Gate:
So time and the hopeless journey wore away. Upon the fourth day from the Cross-roads and the sixth from Minas Tirith they came at last to the end of the living lands, and began to pass into the desolation that lay before the gates of the Pass of Cirith Gorgor; and they could descry the marshes and the desert that stretched north and west to the Emyn Muil. So desolate were those places and so deep the horror that lay on them that some of the host were unmanned, and they could neither walk nor ride further north. Aragorn looked at them, and there was pity in his eyes rather than wrath; for these were young men from Rohan, from Westfold far away, or husbandmen from Lossarnach, and to them Mordor had been from childhood a name of evil, and yet unreal, a legend that had no part in their simple life; and now they walked like men in a hideous dream made true, and they understood not this war nor why fate should lead them to such a pass."
Aragorn sends some of them off to retake another outpost, and some of them are rallied by what he says to them and carry on to the Black Gate. It's such an incredibly poignant moment: Tolkien must have had very young men like this under his command.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2011-05-25 08:18 am (UTC)As for some of the other men in this story, I was thinking of this bit in The Return of the King, as the Army of the West marches on the Black Gate:
So time and the hopeless journey wore away. Upon the fourth day from the Cross-roads and the sixth from Minas Tirith they came at last to the end of the living lands, and began to pass into the desolation that lay before the gates of the Pass of Cirith Gorgor; and they could descry the marshes and the desert that stretched north and west to the Emyn Muil. So desolate were those places and so deep the horror that lay on them that some of the host were unmanned, and they could neither walk nor ride further north.
Aragorn looked at them, and there was pity in his eyes rather than wrath; for these were young men from Rohan, from Westfold far away, or husbandmen from Lossarnach, and to them Mordor had been from childhood a name of evil, and yet unreal, a legend that had no part in their simple life; and now they walked like men in a hideous dream made true, and they understood not this war nor why fate should lead them to such a pass."
Aragorn sends some of them off to retake another outpost, and some of them are rallied by what he says to them and carry on to the Black Gate. It's such an incredibly poignant moment: Tolkien must have had very young men like this under his command.