What A Lovely Day To Fight?
(Sitting in a trench in a dark night)
‘Hey Sarge, is that the enemy singing?’
‘Probably Private, but it seems more probable that they are men first.’
‘What do you mean sarge?’
‘I just hear a song boy, enjoy the night while it lasts.’
There probably are far better and far worse war stories. There probably are enough wars themselves for worthy stories. There probably are still enough men for another battle. And there still are plenty of wounds to heal.
War is a drug. War is hell. War is a game. War is stupid. War is a business.
Wars are like fast food. We know it kills all of us slowly, but almost all of us enjoy it so much that we forget that very fact. I know war is hated as much as it is liked. It deserves so. People die in it after all. But nothing makes a better plot than nationalism, business, heroism, pain, wounds, stories, armies, fantasies, freedom, power and drugs all rolled into one.
I’ve never seen my nation fight a war in my lifetime. I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling war anywhere near me or near my nation. But I hear plenty about it. I know how it feels to be on that battlegrounds with bullets whizzing past your head and men blowing up in pieces like balloons. It is loud and it is scary. It is like a day where you lost all hope and you believe you are as good as dead and above that, you get a license to go berserk. I know this too that war is nothing like that. I have never even fired a single bullet myself. I know too little about life itself to know about the greatest festival of death.
War is not good for anybody. A man on the battlefield may momentarily enjoy the rush of a kill, but in his mind and in his breath speaks the peace of home. For both sides of the line. War is good only for war itself.
There will be enough wars in the future. Not all out international or world wars. Conflicts maybe but wars, no. We are done with that. Or at least we all will be done if by mistake there happens to be one in the future.
Armies give out advertisements to recruit people whereas technology companies sit back and find their offices and inboxes getting filled each day by people who will die to get a job in them.
The time of empires is well past. The time of war is ticking. What is a good day to fight again?
Probably any.
(Walking around the trench in the morning)
‘What a lovely day to fight private!’
‘What a lovely day to die, sir.’
