Stoopid Stuff

Memorial Day - How Many More?

They aren’t the wrong ones. They are not the gun, they are the bullet. Decisions made in elegant, wood paneled rooms, around gleaming tables by men it clean suits send them off to a land of death and horror. They quickly learn. To survive, they become something else. Something hard, and twisted. They learn to lay the front sight on center mass, and squeeze three times. And to move on. Fuckit. Don’t mean nothing. They learn to hold a wounded comrade’s hand, to tell the bloody mess it’s gonna be alright as the corpsman slams him with morphine and blood expander with tears streaming down his muddy cheeks. They learn to shake off the fear after a battle, to load their mags, bum a cigarette and find a quiet place to talk. “Did you see that shit?”

They learn again, when they get home. No one gets it. No one understands. They can’t. They weren’t there. They don’t have blood that will never wash off. They don’t carry scars - the easy ones, the ones in flesh and bone, and the harder, more deadly variety, deep inside. So the young men, broken, changed, wondering why the world looks like a grainy, black and white cartoon, try to find their way in this world, this world that isn’t, that cannot be real. Where decisions have no consequences, and a new car is important, and life is taken for granted.

They do not want your sympathy. They do not want a hand out. They want you to TRY, just please fucking TRY to understand what has happened to them. To give them a chance. To have patience when they seem to be pulled in other directions. To remember they didn’t choose this path, and that ultimately, they went there and did these things and saw these things for YOU. They just want to know that what they did was right, and that someday, somehow, things will be right again for them.

Don’t forget ‘em. Ever…

Cross posted for my friends at Sadly, No!

posted by mikey @ 12:05 PM