It’s been told that in the eye of a hurricane, there is a complete calm unlike any other. Amidst the chaos and destruction, there reigns a delicate balance of foreboding and security. As I stand on a battlefield thrown into a similar chaos, I find resolve. My mind reaches that hurricane’s eye, and I no longer feel fear. I have no hatred; I no longer see only the blood of my brothers and my enemies comingling in a tidal wave of death. I realize that I am ready to die. The gold cross necklace that lies just above my heart burns into my skin. I desire to see my God above, the God that created man, and gave us free will. He gave us the free will to placate the atrocity that is war. We kill our enemies, and we kill our brothers. We fall victim to our mortality. On this battlefield, we don’t just fight the obvious enemy. We face the demons that lurk inside our subconscious. Those demons either possess, or become exorcized. The leeches that survive bring red to our eyes; an unfailing and unforgiving bloodlust that cannot be sated. We fight the enemy for our country. They have wronged the right of our homeland. So the bloodlust should be inevitable, shouldn’t it?
War changes my brethren. We grew calloused in training. We are sliced and scarred on the battlefield. The memories of pleas, cries, and terrorized eyes are etched into our minds. I see my brothers who are plagued with demons succumb to their bloodlust and hatred as they murder ravenously without remorse. They have fallen into an abyss of hopelessness, overwhelmed by red rage. They claim to kill for the defense of our country’s liberty and prosperity, and yet, they have an almost palpable pleasure in taking out their pent up rage on the unsuspecting enemy. We are changed. We are fragmented into something that is no longer brotherhood. We become us and them. I have demons that jeer at me from my past, and those that stalk me in my present, but I refuse to fall victim to their menace. I fight with the power of a hundred men; myself and my brothers who suffer from the demonic possession of war.
So I fight. Men yell around me from despair, agony, and fear. Adrenaline pumps through veins. Guns spit bullets at inhumane speed, faster than can be perceived. The wounded stagger and fall. The dead drop into nonexistence. I move with extreme agility, fearing faulty moves when I sense my newfound predator’s glare. The cold metal of my gun would chill my hand if it hadn’t already spotted black from frostbite. I look up, eyes locking with another of my species. A bloodlust is prevalent in my enemy’s eye. I recognize that this other soldier, my enemy, suffers from his demons just as my brothers do. He deserves the solace of death. I raise the shiny metal gun in my dirty hand, and pull the trigger. There is the sound of shots everywhere, but this single boom rings in my ears. I need not look, it has made contact for sure; flesh and blood to manmade steel, and the end of a life. This enemy becomes a carcass of memories to rot in No Man’s Land. None dare to touch the dead for fear of becoming one of them. For a split second I mourn the loss of a fellow being, and then throw myself out of a strong, new line of fire.
In this moment, I remember how I pined for death. I desire to be reunited with my brothers who have fallen victim to the wind and my God more than anything. I want to throw the gun from my hands and die. I envy those who no longer have to endure the incessant pain. I want to touch those golden gates and watch as my deceased brothers call to me from the other side, more alive than they were when they were living. But it’s not my time, I realize. The enemies fall back into the abyss of darkness. It looms in the black sky of the dead hour. I’m not only here to combat the enemy. I must help my brothers rekindle their humanity lost in the mud of the trenches. They who have lost themselves must be found.
After our enemies fall back, we cede into the trenches. For many, these trenches have been dug as their grave. We step into inches of mud and muck, putrid stench and human excretion. Disease and affliction passes like a burning wildfire, and if some survive combat, that number of survivors is diminished by the conditions of the trenches. We muddle through the terror and death, the tragedy and overwhelming rollercoaster of thought. We are left to fight ourselves in a vicious tango of confliction. War has rubbed my eyes raw. I have seen the unthinkable. It has constricted my lungs and suffocated my being. It has left me at my lowest, and built me up to my highest. An experience unlike anything else, it tortures and strengthens me. The grass is greener, and the sunset is redder after being surrounded by such an abyss of darkness for so long. We expunge the demons that taunted and tormented us on our journey of self-comprehension. We learn to live. We learn to breathe.
In the end I help my brothers; the plagued, the stable, the hopeful, the hopeless. Decades have passed, and my mind still aches from the afflicted memories that haunt me. My body grows weak and weary in my last years. I have lived and died on that battlefield and am left fragmented and alone. But I feel, from time to time, that absence of fear and remorse. The eye of the hurricane surrounds me, and I can breathe easy in a moment of solace.