Skyline operations

Dave Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Mon Feb 11 20:07:44 UTC 2002


I concur with James Landau's conclusion. I can attest to the use of the verb
"to skyline" and the participial adjective "skylined," meaning being visible
or silhouetted against the sky, as being in US military parlance in the
late-80s. The OED includes the participial adjective, dating it to 1946.
This clearly is an older use of the term.

The operative phrase is not "skyline operations." Auden, putting meter and
rhyme aside, could just have well have said "to skyline oneself." The noun
"operations" contributes to the military air of the poem and adds the sense
that the new "heroic" soldier is not just saving his own skin, but by not
giving away his unit's position and "operations" is also saving his comrades
and contributing to victory in battle.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of James A. Landau
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 11:22 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Skyline operations


In a message dated Mon, 11 Feb 2002 10:57:42 AM Eastern Standard Time,
Alexey Fuchs <alexeyf at ZORAN.CO.IL> writes:

> Dear List Members,
>
> W.H.Auden's poem 'Missing' contains the following lines:
>
> Heroes are buried who
> Did not believe in death
> And bravery is now
> Not in the dying breath
> But resisting the temptations
> To skyline operations.
>
>the poem in question was written in 1928

The following is a guess:

At a distance it is much easier to spot a person when he is silhouetted
against the sky than when he is silhouetted against the earth.  This is
especially true of soldiers, who wear uniforms in colors such as khaki that
are deliberately designed to blend in with the ground.

While it is impossible to always keep from being silhouetted against the
sky, there are simple things a soldier can do to make this occur less often,
and therefore not be so easily spotted by the enemy.  The first rule is
simple:  "Keep off the skyline!!"

(Hollywood is either unaware of this rule, or deliberately puts actors
portraying soldiers on a skyline so as to make them more visible to the
audience, which does not shoot back.)

Assuming that Auden used "skyline" as an attributive noun rather than as the
verb of an infinitive, then he might be referring to feats of battlefield
bravado such as deliberately standing up on top of a rise in the ground to
let the enemy see you.

Writing in 1928, Auden was very likely to have been thinking of the World
War, in which it was proven over and over again that machine guns are more
powerful than gallantry.

By this interpretation Auden was writing a polemic on the subject of
battlefield tactics, and was saying "you win a battle not by dying gallantly
but by resisting the temptation to suicidal stunts and staying close to the
ground where you have a chance to shoot the enemy before he shoots you."

Patton, thinking of Nathan Hale, said something similar:  "Nobody ever won a
war by dying for his country.  He won it by making the other poor son of a
bitch die for HIS country."

Was Auden writing on military tactics?  Perhaps, considering that in the
1920's portraying the stupidities of the World War military was a common
literary activity.

      - Jim Landau

P.S. memo to self:  read less military history and more poetry!



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