Brothers in Arms
The song bewails the waste of precious human life much along the lines of a Robert Burns’ dirge
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.[2]
Generally speaking, Knopfler’s early career in journalism[3] is evident in his thoughtful lyrics. In this song, he begins with the subject’s place of origin, possibly inferring the sorts of national identities and territorial claims over which wars are usually fought. On the bleak battlefield, a soldier is alone, except for his comrades, and as far as can be from the loves and comforts of home. Then Knopfler abruptly switches to a cosmic view encompassing many different worlds, each orbiting its own sun, and it is evident that humankind cannot live together on the one planet given to them to inhabit.
With great verbal economy, Knopfler encapsulates utter destruction as darkness falls on the grim scene and obliterates everything good. “Now the sun’s gone to hell …” envisages an apocalyptic sunset and becomes a metaphor for death, along with the wry acknowledgment that death attends every man (and woman), an acknowledgement that might easily have come from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Writing, as I am, at Eastertime, I experience the awful shudder of that unusual darkness over the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion and his desolation. The Crucifixion offers a parallel scene to that of a young man in battle fatigues at his point of death. As life ebbs away, so, humanly, does hope. It is then a small jump from the sun setting on the platoon’s misery to recent news from the war in Ukraine. Knopfler’s conclusion that “We’re fools to make war / On our brothers in arms” could not sound more contemporary.
This year, Easter and ANZAC occur very close together. Those familiar words, “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them”[4] recall the act of remembering, along with the perennial nature of war itself. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes has observed that “there is a time for war, and a time for peace” (Eccl 3:8).[5] When viewing a Berlin performance of Brothers in Arms recorded in 2007,[6] I found it moving to see the audience rise to a standing ovation. I believe that references to World War II still touch raw wounds today.
Could Knopfler’s call for an end to fighting be more than idealism set to music? In the present moment this same song touches a nerve; men, young and old, have been called upon by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to defend their country and they well deserve the glorious title “Brothers in Arms.” Their pain touches me deeply, as a pain carefully articulated by Knopfler’s, not so gently, weeping guitar with its overdriven chords. And that pain is embodied as the Hammond organ-player leans into the song’s musical climax.
Soldiers of different stripes can, of course, be described as “brothers in arms.” Whether volunteering, or conscripted, a military career is of necessity hazardous, but along the way, deep understandings and friendships are forged. It is a brotherhood that has sometimes extended across enemy lines in selfless acts of care for the wounded, and it stands in opposition to the very violence and disintegration of war.
Thoughts of suffering, bloodshed, aggression, death, fear, heroism, love, hate, faithfulness, and compassion are prevalent right now. They belong to each story here: Easter, Gallipoli, and the unfolding Ukrainian situation. On such occasions, the sun sinks into hell as evil appears to get the upper hand. And given the solemn remembrance of Good Friday along with the celebration of Easter Sunday, Saturday has a special sense of desolation about it.
But Easter Saturday forms an important pause. Perhaps we could learn from the women who watched and waited at the tomb (Matt 27:57-66). What were they waiting for? Had they anticipated the Resurrection ahead of their (slower) male colleagues? Or did they wait in the numbness of catastrophic grief? Mathew’s account has them returning to that same tomb early Sunday morning only to become the primary witnesses of an angel’s extraordinary news, “He is not here, he has risen!!”
Resurrection should not be pasted over Knopfler’s battle scene to lessen the calamities of war. Resurrection does, however, provide a stark contrast to the Sun’s descent into hell. As C.S. Lewis memorably suggested, “Death itself would start working backwards.”[7] Resurrection belongs to and promotes a new reality; the dawning of the long-awaited Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ followers have been called to compassion, to suffer along with those who are in pain here and now. In so doing they anticipate resurrection, going well beyond Knopfler’s conclusion that “We’re fools to make war ….” Instead of retreating to pacifist or activist camps, they are called to be Good Samaritans who attend the broken and the wounded on either side of a conflict. Their task is restorative.
There is another song which seems to express a number of these intertwined thoughts; Above All,[8] by Paul Baloche and Lenny LeBlanc. Its language is actually as bellicose as Knopfler’s:
“you lived to die, rejected and alone,
like a rose trampled on the ground
you took the fall, and thought of me ….”[9]
How many have died in the Ukrainian conflict already, cut off from their loved ones, isolated, and alone?
As I mourn Ukraine’s national agony, Knopfler’s forty-year-old song provides me with a vehicle for lament.[10] That lament is a prayer, of sorts, but without the religious trappings. Its phrases, “written in the starlight” and “every line in your palm,” taken at face value, seem rather dubious references to destiny; nonetheless, I perceive a search for something upon which to lay hold existing beyond the harsh reality of battle weariness. Is this more than just fate, and are there not ways to resolve conflict without using weapons? Can we not see in the vaulted universe, as well as in the mind-bending complexity of a human hand, a creator’s intention for human life? Perhaps there is someone who can shine a light upon this bitter darkness?
Heavenly Father, please be with every frightened man, woman, and child in Ukraine today. Answer Knopfler’s lament giving people like him the strength to overcome evil with good; as we all work towards and wait for your kingdom, in which, fully and finally, all weapons of war will be beaten into farming tools. Amen.[11]
Peter Jelleyman graduated from Laidlaw College in 2012 with a BTheol. He currently works as a Data Analyst for Rhema Media in Auckland. Peter enjoys poetry and music, and is particularly interested in what musicians are saying and how they are saying it. Peter blogs in his spare time and relishes any occasion in which he can explore the sonic world of musical synthesizers.
[1] Mark Knopfler, Brothers In Arms HD - Royal Albert Hall 2019 SBD, YouTube,
https://youtu.be/2R2Qtf3UeL0. With the electric organ building (from about 3:48) there is additional passion to which (at 6:01) Knopfler himself, answers on guitar. I my opinion, this is a wonderful lament musically as well as lyrically, perhaps one of Knopfler’s best songs.
[2] Robert Burns, “Man’s inhumanity to Man,". Poetry Nook, https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/mans-inhumanity-man?msclkid=992cefccc5f511ecb33e4f7e0d4e03f2
[3] Timeline, Mark Knopfler’s personal website, https://www.markknopfler.com/about/timeline/?msclkid=2275d640b2b211ecb796d7002147b73e
[4] For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon, Poetry Foundation website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57322/for-the-fallen
[5] Biblical References NRSV.
[6] Mark Knopfler, Brothers In Arms (Berlin 2007 | Official Live Video), YouTube, https://youtu.be/EMRJT2ebvAk.
[7] C S Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Grafton, 1950) 148, a children’s story in which the Lion, a Messianic symbol, is resurrected from unjust death by means of a “deeper magic” (or wisdom) than the paradigms from which the White Witch, who killed him, actually operated.
[8] Paul Baloche, Lenny LeBlanc, “Above All,” Genius website, https://genius.com/Lenny-leblanc-above-all-lyrics
[9] Above All, lyrics.
[10] Eugene H Peterson, Leap Over a Wall (New York: HarperOne, 1998), 120. In a discourse about “David in Lament” (Chapter 11), Peterson writes, “Death isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is failing to deal with reality and becoming disconnected from what is actual. The worst thing is trivializing the honorable, desecrating the sacred. What I do with my grief affects the way you handle your grief; together we form a community that deals with death and other loss in the context of God’s sovereignty, which is expressed finally in resurrection.”
[11] Isa 2:4; Mic 4:3.