WAR always has moments that are heroic, but also absurd.

We see this more sharply in tragedy. In a less-remembered scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet watches the Norwegian soldiers depart for battle against the Polish troops. He asks the captain leading them why they are off to fight.

The captain replies, “We go to gain a little patch of ground/That hath in it no profit but the name.” 

The captain is not enthusias