No Boots In Boot Camp

Dearest Sammie,

It's only been a few weeks since I have been away from you but it seems like an eternity. Everyday I look at the picture of you that I brought with me and it pains me that I can not be there with you to touch your face, to kiss those sweet lips of yours. Every time I shoot my gun, and take the life of a fellow human being, I remind myself that they are the enemy and I am doing this for you, for the future that we will share together.

Signing those papers, saying that I would come fight for our country was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. Especially when I found out that at boot camp, they don't really give you boots. Did you know that? I didn't, I mean why call something Boot camp if the goal of that is not to give the people boots but rather break their spirits, make them into soulless killing machines.

I admit that you are the only thing that is keeping me half way human right now. I knew what I was getting myself into, and yet I didn't. No one warns you about the after effects of watching the bullet you just shot, go through another human being. No one warns you that watching that person fall to the ground, clutching the area where the bullet entered, will give you nightmares that night and my guess is for years to come.

Boot camp, which was supposedly going to get me ready for this, failed horribly to do that. I mean you don't shoot your fellow soldiers, you have their back. If they are in trouble, so are you and the mission then becomes protecting one of your own. Yet here, I kill fellow soldiers, sure they are the enemy but is it really so different than killing one of our soldiers? Maybe, maybe not. Right now I just can not fathom how the powers that be, how the president can say it's OK to kill people who have done nothing wrong to us. Sure they work for their government but so do we! How does that make them worse than us? Am I not also working for my country, whom some could make the argument is just as bad as the others? I mean they dropped a bomb in middle of the country, which ended up killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Truthfully I thank God every day that I am not a part of that. I am doing all of this, so that when I come home, I can marry you. I can be with you for the rest of my days on this Earth. I have to keep reminding myself why I signed up for this, why I am going through this hell. Even the torture of boot camp (I still can't get over the fact that I did not get any boots there) could not prepare me for war, but nothing could. 

The only thing worse than war, was the look in your eyes when I told you I was going. It haunted me all throughout boot camp, and stays with me to this day. Never in my life have I seen such sadness, even here amongst this misery, your sadness is far worse. If I had to, In would kill every person who I encountered to get back to you and take that sadness out of your eyes. Trust me, I know how weird that sounds, especially since I described the way it feels to kill someone to you. However you have no idea how much love I have for you, how much I need you to be happy and the lengths I would go to, to make sure it happens.

I rarely sleep at night any more. That’s when we go out and attack the enemy, when we will win this war, according to the generals. Apparently when the night falls, the culture of these people dictate that they be inside, to avoid the evil, to protect them from death. Like the boot camp thing, this makes me chuckle a little since being inside doesn't help them at all, rather it puts them at a disadvantage. They have no idea that we are coming, and therefore never have enough time to protect themselves.

I guess what we are doing to them is the same thing I did to you. A sneak attack, you were waiting for a romantic evening with me, and then BOOM! I tell you I am going away, I am going to war. Sure, I know we made up and I think you understand why I am doing this but  like the poor people that we attack at night, you had no way of knowing what was about to happen.

I have no idea what will happen either. In boot camp, they told us to always expect the unexpected. That this enemy, the one that we fought so hard not to go to war with, will find a weakness in all of us and exploit it, leading to us losing the war, possibly opening the United States up to be invaded. I don't buy it but they sure are convincing, none of us trust these people and as innocent as I find them, I can not help but pull the trigger before they do. As hard as it is to watch them fall to their deaths, its not nearly as hard as falling to mine.

Or thinking about how you would react to me dying. The scary look in you eyes when I finally told you I was heading to war, that I had enlisted told me enough already. I will come back home to you alive and well, then we will plan our wedding. I know, I know that is supposed to be a girl thing but I want more than anything to help with that.

Love You Always,

Ryan