Before he leaves, he stands as soldier. At full attention, and salutes the headstone. John bids farewell to his friend with an honor reserved for soldiers. Men of the military who he watched die on the battle field.
John is a soldier, and even when he owes the great detective so much more than his life. his duty to march ever onwards remains. Soldier till the end.
#Brave little soldier boy, come marching Holmes.
I see this as John’s coping mechanism. He is falling apart here. He is so broken and so hurt and he simply can’t bear to go on. But his military training teaches him that he must continue anyway. And so he retreats to that. Back to the soldier, the one who has watched men die over and over and who has killed some of them himself and yet can still march on and he leans on that trained stability. His world is crashing down, but he himself is not allowed to.
I full heartedly agree with this statement.It’s a survival tactic of self-preservation that years of infantry training have taught him: to push forward, bury the dead, and eventually, readjust to civilian life when he returns from the battlefield.
When one walks with Sherlock Holmes they see the battlefield.
And John isn’t scared of the war, or Sherlock Holmes, in fact, He misses it. He misses him.
And he copes by becoming a soldier in spirit, in an attempt to compensate for the lack of the battlefield. He was doing precisely that when a madman asked him those three words.
"Afganistan or Iraq?"
But this time, he knows the war is over.
He has nowhere to march but home. A civilian life. Mary Mortsan. Boring, Average, Nothing ever happens to me, Life.