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Last night I watched "The Great Escape: The Untold Story" on youtube, which is a strange little programme, part documentary, part reconstruction of the real-life events behind the film The Great Escape. The programme quoted from the transcript of the interrogation of the guard who shot Roger Bushell, the original Big X, who had planned and organised the escape. The guard claimed that when he was given the order he had said that this was wrong, whereupon his Captain had told him it was a direct order, and he must carry it out. The guard had reasoned that if he refused, he would be shot for disobeying orders, and someone else would simply do the shooting. And then he added "But I have always known that I would answer for this, this deed I did not wish to do."
That sentence made me shiver, because it seemed so terrifyingly right. I don't know if you can call it a narrative kink of mine, exactly, because it's a little too abstract, more like a philosophical position than a kink. And it doesn't derive its power from being something I believe to be true about the world - I think people often get away with doing things they know are wrong, whether or not they wished to do those deeds in the first place. But as part of a narrative, as part of a story about responsibility and consequences, it resonates with me on multiple levels . And it struck me that it's one of the reasons why I find Sapphire and Steel so satisfying, because you could write that sentence over the series as a kind of motto: "I would answer for this, this deed I did not wish to do."
Over and over again in the series, people unwittingly unleash evil on the world and have to pay the ultimate price for doing so. I've already argued that it is Tully who initially summons the Darkness in Assignment 2 – not deliberately, not maliciously, not even knowingly, but he does it – and it is Tully who has to be sacrificed to it at the end (I failed to mention in that discussion that after the Darkness has taken Tully, Sapphire finds a pasque flower blooming in one of the pots. The flower is, of course, closely associated with Sam Pearce, but it is also associated with Eastertide, with the celebration of a sacrifice that defeated the forces of darkness).
In Assignment 3, the future people unwittingly bring a monster with them into the present that will destroy all human life if it escapes. It is a monster that they have created themselves, albeit, again, unwittingly. The future people hate the thought of cruelty to animals, they consider meat-eating barbaric. Their sins are those of omission not commission – they looked away whilst their scientists experimented on hybrids, and accepted the advantages those experiments brought. When they realise the implications of what they have done, some of them come to the terrifying conclusion that the only way to keep the monster imprisoned is to kill themselves – including, shockingly, their own little children –and they duly do so. Unfortunately, Eldred and Rothwyn lack this moral rigour and choose to go back to their own time, taking the monster with them, where it will presumably run rampant. There is no escaping the consequences. They did not choose self-sacrifice, but they will die just the same.
The same holds true of Assignment 4, where the photographer who lets the Shape loose dies as a direct result of his meddling. In Assignment 5 Emma is forced to recognise that, even though she has been given a chance to change history, she must once again shoot her lover or else the human race will be wiped out by a virus. Her loss is the more terrible this time around because she shoots him not by accident but on purpose. Tully, the future people, the photographer, Emma, they all have to answer for their deeds, even when they did not wish to do them. In this world, you always, always have to face the consequences of your actions, and that includes paying the highest possible price, whether or not you manage to clean up the mess you have caused.
The only exception to this ineluctable chain of guilt and sacrifice, or guilt and consequences if you prefer, is Assignment 1, which is, after all, a children's story. And one of the things that make childhood a time of innocence is that your parents stand between you and stark inevitability. When things go horribly wrong, your parents can put it right. (Of course, this isn't always true of the real world, but it is true of the stories we generally consider appropriate for children – yes, there are terrible things out there, and you can make terrible mistakes, but the grown-ups can put it right again, order can be restored and there are no painful, long-term consequences to suffer.) Assignment 6 is also different, because this time there are no humans involved, and no-one has accidentally unleashed anything on the world. There is still a chain of causality – Sapphire and Steel have apparently triggered the attack by refusing the offer to work for the Higher Authorities - but the story as a whole works quite differently from the others. It's more like inter-office backstabbing than facing ancient evil, and though they are trapped at the end, it's the result of a mistake, not a sacrifice.
I knew most of the facts that "The Great Escape: the Untold Story" recounted, but there were still a few nuggets that fascinated me. For instance, when those 76 men escaped, it was seen as such an appalling propaganda blow that the Germans diverted an astonishing 100,000 troops to look for them. Hitler threw a hissy fit on hearing the news and insisted that all those who escaped should be shot, in direct contradiction of the Geneva Convention, which states that it is the duty of captured soldiers to attempt to escape. Voices of reason within the High Command persuaded him that if every single escaper were shot, the Allies would know that Germany had broken "all the rules of war." Accordingly, Hitler modified his order to "more than half". Himmler decided that the actual figure should be fifty – apparently his desire for nice neat round numbers led him to overlook the point that if it shouldn't be obvious that the men had been killed deliberately, then fifty was a stupidly non-random number to choose – and drew up a list of those who would die. The death certificate for every single man stated that he had been shot while trying to escape, a transparent lie that the British top brass of Stalag Luft III immediately exposed, when he forced the Kommandant to admit that not a single escaper had been injured rather than killed outright during the many so-called escape attempts. After the war, the British moved heaven and earth to track down the exact chain of command by which the orders to kill had filtered through, and executed various people involved. Including the guard who shot Bushell in the back of the head.
I also watched a program on youtube about the making of the Great Escape, which included a gem of a little interview with Donald Pleasance, who had actually been shot down himself during the war and ended up in Stalag Luft I. He complained humorously that when he tried to give the filmmakers the benefit of his experience, they refused to believe that POWs would ever have used rude words to armed Nazi guards, and he soon learned to keep his mouth shut about what the camps had actually been like.
That sentence made me shiver, because it seemed so terrifyingly right. I don't know if you can call it a narrative kink of mine, exactly, because it's a little too abstract, more like a philosophical position than a kink. And it doesn't derive its power from being something I believe to be true about the world - I think people often get away with doing things they know are wrong, whether or not they wished to do those deeds in the first place. But as part of a narrative, as part of a story about responsibility and consequences, it resonates with me on multiple levels . And it struck me that it's one of the reasons why I find Sapphire and Steel so satisfying, because you could write that sentence over the series as a kind of motto: "I would answer for this, this deed I did not wish to do."
Over and over again in the series, people unwittingly unleash evil on the world and have to pay the ultimate price for doing so. I've already argued that it is Tully who initially summons the Darkness in Assignment 2 – not deliberately, not maliciously, not even knowingly, but he does it – and it is Tully who has to be sacrificed to it at the end (I failed to mention in that discussion that after the Darkness has taken Tully, Sapphire finds a pasque flower blooming in one of the pots. The flower is, of course, closely associated with Sam Pearce, but it is also associated with Eastertide, with the celebration of a sacrifice that defeated the forces of darkness).
In Assignment 3, the future people unwittingly bring a monster with them into the present that will destroy all human life if it escapes. It is a monster that they have created themselves, albeit, again, unwittingly. The future people hate the thought of cruelty to animals, they consider meat-eating barbaric. Their sins are those of omission not commission – they looked away whilst their scientists experimented on hybrids, and accepted the advantages those experiments brought. When they realise the implications of what they have done, some of them come to the terrifying conclusion that the only way to keep the monster imprisoned is to kill themselves – including, shockingly, their own little children –and they duly do so. Unfortunately, Eldred and Rothwyn lack this moral rigour and choose to go back to their own time, taking the monster with them, where it will presumably run rampant. There is no escaping the consequences. They did not choose self-sacrifice, but they will die just the same.
The same holds true of Assignment 4, where the photographer who lets the Shape loose dies as a direct result of his meddling. In Assignment 5 Emma is forced to recognise that, even though she has been given a chance to change history, she must once again shoot her lover or else the human race will be wiped out by a virus. Her loss is the more terrible this time around because she shoots him not by accident but on purpose. Tully, the future people, the photographer, Emma, they all have to answer for their deeds, even when they did not wish to do them. In this world, you always, always have to face the consequences of your actions, and that includes paying the highest possible price, whether or not you manage to clean up the mess you have caused.
The only exception to this ineluctable chain of guilt and sacrifice, or guilt and consequences if you prefer, is Assignment 1, which is, after all, a children's story. And one of the things that make childhood a time of innocence is that your parents stand between you and stark inevitability. When things go horribly wrong, your parents can put it right. (Of course, this isn't always true of the real world, but it is true of the stories we generally consider appropriate for children – yes, there are terrible things out there, and you can make terrible mistakes, but the grown-ups can put it right again, order can be restored and there are no painful, long-term consequences to suffer.) Assignment 6 is also different, because this time there are no humans involved, and no-one has accidentally unleashed anything on the world. There is still a chain of causality – Sapphire and Steel have apparently triggered the attack by refusing the offer to work for the Higher Authorities - but the story as a whole works quite differently from the others. It's more like inter-office backstabbing than facing ancient evil, and though they are trapped at the end, it's the result of a mistake, not a sacrifice.
I knew most of the facts that "The Great Escape: the Untold Story" recounted, but there were still a few nuggets that fascinated me. For instance, when those 76 men escaped, it was seen as such an appalling propaganda blow that the Germans diverted an astonishing 100,000 troops to look for them. Hitler threw a hissy fit on hearing the news and insisted that all those who escaped should be shot, in direct contradiction of the Geneva Convention, which states that it is the duty of captured soldiers to attempt to escape. Voices of reason within the High Command persuaded him that if every single escaper were shot, the Allies would know that Germany had broken "all the rules of war." Accordingly, Hitler modified his order to "more than half". Himmler decided that the actual figure should be fifty – apparently his desire for nice neat round numbers led him to overlook the point that if it shouldn't be obvious that the men had been killed deliberately, then fifty was a stupidly non-random number to choose – and drew up a list of those who would die. The death certificate for every single man stated that he had been shot while trying to escape, a transparent lie that the British top brass of Stalag Luft III immediately exposed, when he forced the Kommandant to admit that not a single escaper had been injured rather than killed outright during the many so-called escape attempts. After the war, the British moved heaven and earth to track down the exact chain of command by which the orders to kill had filtered through, and executed various people involved. Including the guard who shot Bushell in the back of the head.
I also watched a program on youtube about the making of the Great Escape, which included a gem of a little interview with Donald Pleasance, who had actually been shot down himself during the war and ended up in Stalag Luft I. He complained humorously that when he tried to give the filmmakers the benefit of his experience, they refused to believe that POWs would ever have used rude words to armed Nazi guards, and he soon learned to keep his mouth shut about what the camps had actually been like.