Thoughts on Seeing the Elephant
When a soldier has his first brush with close combat it has been, in times past, described as “seeing the elephant.” I heard about this phrase several months back, and I have read a little bit about it. I simply can not stomach too much reading about real combat scenes. When you are the mother of a soldier, suddenly every combat scene becomes a tale with your soldier’s face in it. Every soldier looks a little more familiar to you, and you find a deep sense of love and worry for each man in uniform. You know that they are a son, father, husband, or brother to someone. Whoever he is, when he sees the elephant his schema is forever changed.
I found the following excerpt on The American History Association’s GI Round Table discussions. It made a lot of sense, and helped me understand a little more about this phrase.
Seeing the elephant
After the Mexican War of 1846, veterans who had fought under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, climbed Chapultepec Heights, and walked through the Halls of Montezuma had a word for it, a now-forgotten bit of American slang. They “had seen the elephant.” Travel on foreign soil, the hardships, anxieties, hopes, and fears of old campaigners had given them a new range of experience. Those who had seen the elephant—like a boy at his first circus or a hayseed who’d visited the city—naturally came back feeling more mature, a little superior to the stay-at-homes. They had become men beyond their years. They had learned a lot about the world, about themselves under fire, and about the ability of human beings to “take it.” They would’ never be quite the same again.
This attitude is common to all veterans, now more than ever. A global war is a great many things. It is, among others, a huge educational experience, where men learn at an accelerated pace about new technologies, geography, foreign languages, the races of mankind, and their own behavior in crisis. They have seen not only Paree, but Berlin and Tokyo, the Arctic Circle and South Seas, built bases on distant shores and accumulated experience in fighter planes at the rate of four hundred miles an hour. Many of them have dealt in life and death, under the grim alternative of killing or being killed. Millions of young Americans have gone through varying degrees in this initiation into the veterans’ organizations of the future.
This is about the 5th different version of the origins and meaning behind the phrase that I have read. I guess this one resonates with me because it has a deeper face validity than the others. I can see how the experience of combat could have been metaphorically described as seeing the elephant. More so in the 1800’s than today. Metaphors are excellent tools for communicating a deeper emotion and understanding to an experience — and usually it is used for less common experiences. Metaphors are only effective inasmuch as they create a tension for the reader.
Once cultural norms and values shift and change, some metaphors lose their ability to stir the same kind of emotion that they once were able to deeply evoke. In the 1800’s seeing an elephant was not a common experience to those living outside their native habitat. Circuses were big, but they did not have access to areas outside of the railroad for the most part. Seeing an elephant was a new, uncommon, and breathtaking event. Many people did not know what combat was like, but they could either remember or imagine how they would feel coming within close proximity of one of the largest mammals in the world, and living to tell about it!
“They had learned a lot about the world, about themselves under fire, and about the ability of human beings to “take it.” They would’ never be quite the same again.”
I know my son has seen the elephant — this happened a while back in Baghdad. He called me and we discussed what he could share about it. He was a little uncertain in the beginning of the conversation, and I could hear an uneasiness in him.
I won’t tell you what happened; it’s not my story and it’s not my place. When he started to tell me the things that was troubling his soul I took a very deep breath, swallowed hard enough to clear the burning lump that had been welling up there, and told him “Son, I am so incredibly proud of you. You fought the fight. You did what was necessary, and you are my hero!” I did not tell him I was sorry for what he had been through.
I knew he needed to hear that I understand that he has been through something far bigger than either of us, and bigger than both of us combined. I needed to be sure that he understood that I knew that he was an older man that day, and that I could acknowledge that he is blazing trails and fighting fights of which I know very little, if anything, about. He has surpassed me now in certain life experiences and has seen things I can not even imagine. That is a hard realization as a parent.
He is in a much different sandbox these days then from when I was in charge of him. The elephant he had seen as a child was an attraction at a circus, but the one he has seen as a man is one that will either make him or break him. I am praying diligently that the man is made and made strong — so far I see the fruits of those prayers. God speed to you Mike. I love you.
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