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I've run the courses, learned the rules and shot the targets. I know when to fight, when to run and how to hide. They taught me the skills to survive in even the most hellish conditions and still be able to do my job without sleep for days on end. I was told there was nothing nobler than what I did, what we did. They said that dying in the name of freedom was the greatest sacrifice one could make -- something about Honor, Glory and more about Dying for the Cause than I needed to hear. Bullshit.
         It's all propaganda. If most people knew what it really was like out there, once all the lies about excitement, brotherhood and adventure have been taken away, they would have stayed home. They couldn't care less if we live or die, we're just a number to them, just bricks in the wall. I could be in a body bag by tomorrow and they wouldn't care. I'd be a folded flag and dog tag, already with another faceless what's-his-name in my spot.
         I'm lying in some forgotten trench, mortars exploding around me. The rain coming deafens the shouts of the dying. Shivering in the mud, rifle clutched desperately in my hand, I can see others just like me: alone and scared. Not even the dead look peaceful, still with grimaces of pain and fear etched into their stiff faces. No going home for them, they'll be left here to rot in some cold European country those farm-boys couldn't even begin to find on a map. They'll never feel the sun on their faces or see their family again. Home is lost to them, maybe me too, maybe to all of us.
         A man comes running along the muddy trench, shouting for us to be ready. Suddenly the enemy mortar crew gets lucky, a blast only ten feet away scatters a group of people. I'm deafened and thrown back farther into the mud. Still on my side, I watch as the man next to me looks over the lip of the trench. He falls back his eyes wide open. No, he only has one eye. The other seems to have been replaced with a hole. I'm not startled; in fact I barely register it. I try to stand up but the world seems to be moving in slow motion. I suppose I'm shell-shocked, indifferent to the mayhem around me. Bullets buzz by my head as I slowly raise my rifle.
Men shout unintelligible words in some strange language as they charge across the field. I remember wondering who they were, what their life was like before this hellhole. Were they happy then? Are they scared? I could feel my fear coming back; the slow-minded apathy of shock was wearing off. Men I knew and strangers alike lay on the ground, their blood mingling with the rain and mud. I fired my gun a few times in quick succession. One man fell, life gone in an instant, all because of me.
In training they teach you how to kill, not how it feels. Someone I met here once said it got easier the more you do it. I didn't say so, but, I thought that sounded like the sort of thing a serial killer would say. But that doesn't matter anymore. That guy died in France. Did the man who shot out his throat feel anything?
They're closer now. I can see some of their faces. Rage, fear, sadness, all present. Some jump into the trench using their weapons as clubs. We're really not all that different out here, our faces covered in mud, disfigured by fear and pain. We could be brothers only distinguished by our uniforms. I block a rifle and knock my opponent to the ground firing a shot into his back. Maybe I'll feel sadness because of that later. But then again, death could spare me that.
I think that this might be the end. And I guess when you come to the end of something you think about the beginning. I can picture a dusty road leading up to a house with peeling paint and the feel it has been lived in for generations. A middle-aged woman in a yellow dress stands on the porch watching a group of children play. Two girls and three boys, the oldest of them ten the youngest just a toddler being carried around by his sister. Now some years have passed. The mother has grey in her hair, still happy but with a faint sadness in her eyes, her husband in the chair next to her, his pipe in hand. Only three children now, the two oldest with families of their own now. More memories blur past until I reach the last time I saw them. Mother was crying with her head in her hands, Father shouting at me because he thinks I'll get myself killed, and that defiant look on my face and the knowledge in my heart that I would be a hero. This war was the best thing to happen to me. I would earn respect and become a man. I turn my back to them and walk towards the recruiting station. Head held high trying not to cry.
Now I wish it had been different. I wish I hadn't made her cry. I didn't want that to be the last words I said to them. I could have stayed home. I didn't want the only thing for them to remember me by to be a folded flag and a speech on how I died doing my duty. Now that might be all they get. I might never see home again. I wished for a lot of things. But more than anything I didn't want to die.