Freedomain Radio

 I just got an image in my imagination.

A beachhead fight, in the trenches, just like Saving Private Ryan. All these bodies lying around. Bullets flying to and from everywere.

I stand up to take a look around. I see explosions. It's even hard to know in which side I fight, or where is my platoon advancing to. Hell, I don't even know why they are fighting. All I know is that some people sent us here to kill and die because they wanted this beach for them and their larger plans.

I see a bold guy down the trench. He is gathering some of the soldiers from my platoon and giving instructions to them. He has some urgency, like what he plans for the group to do can end the struggle.

Everybody is beaten down and a few of the soldiers there are looking away and around, like doubting that the plan this bold guy has can work.

I see some people walking back from this group to pick up a weapon and head to the trenches again. THey shoot aimlessly at the rising smoke over the hills, and scream die, like if they were actually doing something.

I see some others tending to the wounded on the ground. Trying to give people confort in their final moments. I see others pulling wounded from the line of fire, and many others trying to escape from pinned down positions. THe trenches are crowded, but we go nowhere from here.

I see now that the bold guy has a plan. It's an attack plan and he is starting to deploy some people into key locations in the battlefield. He has a pamflet of his battleplan and some are giving it away.

One of these soldiers gives one to me and I take a look at it. It makes sense, but it calls for us to do a coordinated attack out of the trenches. One we all know will mean that the guns will be pointed at us. Some are certainly going to fall.

But I stay in the trenches. I discard the pamflet with the plan. I instead work to check on my own wounds and start to look around to call a medic. In my mind I start to prepare the story I'll tell the medic about how serious my wounds are. When some of the soldiers working with the bold guy get into their positions with courage, risking theyr bodies and the relative confort of the trenches, I begin to feel shame.

I go to the bold guy to show him my wounds and see if he still wants me in his plan. He says it's ok for me to stay. I need to heal myself. I go back to the trenches and consider just how auful my wounds are.

But I don't want to stay behhind. What if they win? What if they fight and some fall because I wasn't there? But what if I go and because I'm not fully recovered, some are put in harms way?

Who put me up in this battle anyway? I never agreed to join the army. I'm not a soldier. I want to go home. Can somebody come and stop this? I don't belong here.

Then the guy who had given me the pamflet returns. He is giving away machine guns and hangs one next to me for me to reach and grab, if I ever decide to join the attack.

Crap. I guess there is no way out. I'll have to go in and fight.

What does it make you feel when you read this?