Smelling madness in the morning

THERE'S no substitute for art when getting at the sometimes dark heart of a matter. It can better speak to truth than the firsthand observations of people present at a pivotal, historical event. Of war’s futility, reckless bravery and the men who made the famed “Charge of the Light Brigade” in the 1854 Crimean War, French Marshal Pierre Bosquet said, "It is magnificent, but it is not war — it is madness." He walked the bloodied ground in the tragic aftermath of the action. His words were poetic and true. But I think Francis Ford Coppola captured the insanity of war and man’s irrational nature more powerfully in Apocalypse Now when the unhinged Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) said, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. The smell, you know that gasoline smell ... Smells like, victory!" These two lines are at once satirical, chilling, profound – and impossible to forget.