3 Minutes

This is the last three minutes of my life. There’s something I have to tell you. I’ve never really hated them, the enemy. If my unit heard me say that they would probably shoot me themselves - maybe you wold too. But you haven’t looked into a man’s eyes on the battlefield. I see a man made of flesh and bones in front of me. A complex connection of neurons keep him conscious, just like me; and just like me he is only following orders.

         Yes, I still shoot and kill them just as I’ve been trained to do. And now it’s me lying in this shit smelling mud. I’m not angry at him for shooting me. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep when I thought about the letters that would be sent back to the families of the people that I had killed. Alas, now I have no fear that the sleep will come.

         Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we all just dropped our weapons. Sure politicians can wage wars but we don’t have to fight them. We don’t have to. I have just as much in common with the man standing opposite me as the man standing beside me. But I don’t have much time, let me get to the point. It is only now with less than a minute to live that I can see the strength we could have together. I have killed people because I was told to. My friends have killed people because they were told to and I will be dead because someone has been told to kill me. How long will it be before we stop doing what we’re told?