Victims of War
In life, horrors are as memorable as high school crush.
The life of a soldier should meet with death, if they breathe after the war, then their carcass will be hanged on the billboard for aspiration. The people who choose these soldiers very well know how it is all going to end. If these chosen flesh happen to live after the devastation, then their entire life becomes a living hell. As nobody has the answers for what awaits at the end, if you ask them any question about the end, they will lie through their teeth. The only person who holds the answers to what awaits at the end either are dead or simply, afraid.
What they want us to see
Everything the soldier did, heard, touched, smelled, all came back like a tide that never left the beach. Even the fat cats growling at the government, showers the soldiers with rewards and accolades. It is an act of showing the promise of glory and pride for listening to every letter of the word. Deep down it's all about listening, just simple listening. The soldier who listens to every word without any empathy gets put on the pedestal, an aspiration for the rest.
These listeners are treated as role models for the new flesh. Pride and glory allows these listeners to spew out words to carry out the anger from the past and now spew into the empty mind of the young. The blood, the stench, the horror the war holds can never be eradicated or rationalized with any word salad. In life, horrors are as memorable as high school crush.
Yes, one can easily numb the pain by giving into drugs or any man-made alternatives. But the soldier just like any other man in this world, eventually they all wake up from the dream. Then reality hits like a bullet dipped in pure liquified poison. Things used to be different but life has always been the same.
When the sun was shining in the sky, the soldier also once carried the dream like any other man under the eyes of god. The country saw that, they saw the light emerging in the eyes of an innocent person. The light is an aspiration to become someone in life, and the country did what it does best, it laughed and made the innocent one to carry the weight of altruism.
It all makes sense, why this becomes the case every cycle of our long running thirst for doing what's right.
Blaring Propaganda
The enemies get referred to as animals by the suit from the top and also from the boots on the ground, which is justified, since just like animals the soldier is not supposed to understand their word. Every word that comes out of their mouth will be gibberish just like an animal. When any sort of diplomacy gets thrown out of the window, only savagery remains. Just like when you confront an angry animal, the soldier asked to shoot first before even conceiving the idea of thinking.
As the people at the top once wore the shoe of a dreamed man, but it was stripped away by their superior who also had the same shoes as them. An endless cycle that is deemed to consume as many souls as it possibly can without any regard for feelings of anyone or any kind. War is humanity at its lowest, one shouldn't venture into this field looking for light. It is a deception, concocted by the man in the suit making the innocent one think that all of this is for something.
It is, it is for something, it's for death. As the soldier marches in, quickly he sees his own shoes drenched in the blood of his enemies and fellow soldiers, whose hands are torn into pieces, the hands that once held high to the flag of the country. A fascinating mixture of humanity at its lowest, at the end, death was the only one that made the soldier see the equality between us in this cursed world.
They get called Insane
Once the eyes witness any horror, living becomes the dream and the rest gets washed away. Here hopefully the pride and honor of an army man will cloud the minds of soldiers long enough for them to end enough lives before they go "insane".
The definition of insane is strange here, once the propaganda disappears, only the truth remains. If the country considers the revelation of truth to be a traitorous eight, anyone who follows their own intelligence or even uncovers the reality, will be seen as no better than the enemy. Here everyone will turn against the soldier for relying on their mind instead of trusting the man in the suit from the government.
What is fair?
Nothing was fair, it was always unfair, power was never in the hands of people, they just chose it. Now that a group of people has the power to start a war, they will do anything they possibly can to not enter the battlefield. All the fat cats on the top will hide behind the wall telling the rest to match forward with dignity and pride. And all the rest will have no choice but to listen, years of propaganda has finally led to this moment in time.
Thinking of any other choice will get called traitorous behavior. In this moment, at this time, only the powerful have the option to be a coward and still retain their dignity in the eyes of people. I wonder if the soldier knew this is the life that was going to get thrust upon him after conceiving, would he even want to be part of this world. The eyes barely open, now the world is making it see all the horrors of the world and at the same time telling him to move on.
Like there is a dystopian paradise awaits after they do what they are told. A lie, they all swallow, even knowing it's just a lie. It's an unfair world, deeply unfair, as it makes you kill your own and watch somebody who is never going to see the horrors as you. The sadistic thing is about the world, it wants you to stay quiet even faced with great injustice. It's like the hand that came to this world with nothing, only taught to pick up arms and join the play created by the nabobs from the top.
Eventually, it's always been a dead end.
Lies soon follow, as no soldier is brave enough to stand against its fatherland. What are the options here, stand for what you believe in and pay the price by completely disassociating from the country you were born in. Who is going to accept the soldier? The enemy knows the soldier has killed their fellow friends and families, they will certainly close the doors or use the soldier to get the information for more blood fueled war.
The more time the soldier spends with himself, they will have enough sand in their hand to count the seconds of their miserable life. While war might seem hectic at first, but eventually it will become a static noise between voids of silence, there was silence before the siren went off and serenity follows after the dust has settled. Those who get to live will have time to think, hoping they didn't.
They see a battlefield filled with the bodies that once walked with them, on the other eye, they see a fresh batch of patriotism stepping their first foot in the land of no return. Boys who want to see the blood and action they were promised, and men crawling on the miles of feces just to go back, away from the noise.
Civilized world can be cruel, most might think so, but it is deep down. When the soldier returns, they get paid almost nothing back compared to other horrors they had to endure for the rest. From a young age, they are taught to carry arms and end as many lives as possible. And the people from the top expect them to function in the civilized world without any complaint. Here some lose to themselves, others get castrated from society.
A mind that deals with horror and still be able to feel guilt can hardly stay sane in the world. Either they are told to leave their heart, be tough like a tree or…
Getting used to the horrors
The other option is to listen and become blind to the horror that your eyes see every day. Not questioning anything, one half of the mind is determined to kill as many people as possible and the other half wishing for your life to just end before the sun goes down in the evening. Does the soldier even remember what dream he had before his knees are deep into the mud. Why is he even there? Why is the person from the other half of the world reading this in a newspaper and why was he chosen to see the atrocities through his own eyes?
Live too long, the shadow will creep out of the ground, appearing as enemies to the soldier. The noise and stench of the battlefield will make these shadows run free, move around places with no restriction. No border can control them, no fence can hold them off, the only thing that can be done here is to keep fueling the war machine. Endless war only happens, when the shadows crawl out of the pit, many times in history, the government relied on these shadows to keep pumping the lives of more innocent men to the battlefield.
Amusing, the glory of an average soldier will always be the 15 minutes they get to spend with a hooker during their tours. It's all hell after they leave the tent. As they lay there on the battlefield, the only thing that will think up is this little interaction of warmth in the sea of wickedness.
So many questions, even if he found the answers, nothing can be done at this point to change the tides. If the soldier lives, he will go on and choose innocent ones just like he once was and send them on the journey to become man.
