"The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers
stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing.
The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself
immediately behind that officer who in turn moved apart one pace. These
movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of
the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The
end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite reached a fourth.
This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was
now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter
would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between
the two ties."
I had to read this
section a couple times before I completely understood what was going on.
From what I collected, the captain was holding the weight of Peyton
first, and then he switched out with the sergeant. The captain is ranked
higher up the military ladder than the sergeant. Therefore, the captain
was in charge of the execution. As we can see, the captain was holding
Peyton's weight at one point, but then switched out with the sergeant.
Why did he switch out with the sergeant if he was the one in charge of
the execution? Couldn’t he have stepped off himself instead of telling someone
else to step off for him? Maybe I'm reading way too much into this, but I
was wondering if he switched off because of military rules and regulations or
because of more personal reasons. Did he not want to be the one directly
responsible for Peyton's death? Was he
fighting inwardly over the prospect of executing someone? Maybe he had none of these thoughts. His thoughts could have just been thoughts of
preserving his country and fighting for his own cause. So my main question is, why did he have the
sergeant perform the death giving action and not do it himself?
I think the he (most likely) didn't care about Peyton. I think it was more of him as a higher up in the military not wanting to "tarnish" his record by being directly responsible for Peyton's death.
ReplyDeleteIt could be what I previously said, or it could just be a part of military code or rules back then.
DeleteThis might sound bad but maybe the sergeant wanted to kill Peyton..?
ReplyDeleteAnd he therefore wasn't allowed to? That makes sense. Peyton was supposed to be killed for political reasons,not personal.
DeleteI did some research into military chain of command & it's a bit confusing to me. There are commissioned officers & non commissioned officers. It seems that typically, soldiers take orders from those directly above them but not always. We need a military person to explain it all :)
ReplyDeleteKayla, I wanted to say that your picture really helped me understand how the board was positioned on the bridge! I was kind of confused over that. Anyway I'm also confused about this question you have, I don't know what to think about it. I'm afraid I can't be much of a help here :/
ReplyDeleteThat's really interesting that that caught your attention.I loved that quote too! I forget what book I read it in, but there was a big deal made about an execution in which the king insisted he performed it. He believed that a man who orders a death must be willing to carry it out himself.
ReplyDeleteCould the military have put the weight of taking someones life on someone who hadn't done so as much? I assume the captain performed a long time in the army to achieve that rank.
ReplyDelete