Futility
The drama, the chaos and the bedlam of war has draped me into a never-ending circle of bewilderment. O! The false valour, the fabricated pride and the deceptive gratification; was it for this that the limbs dear achieved, now rot in mucky foreign soils. Alas! Is it too treacherous to live serenely in our homes? Does it not simmer the blood in your bodies that soldiers died to recover a few metres of land? Does it not infuriate you that 60,000 of our men were killed in one war, over one city?
Subsequent to finishing my training at the tender age of 18, I was sent to war with my friends to the city of Somme. We reached at our camps at the night of 29’Th of June, full of delirium. Alas! Did we realise at that moment what would happen to us the next day. I was in the same regiment as my best friend, James Fret. I could see from his eyes honour he felt to be in this war; had he ever had a vision of the future the dignity from his eyes would have been swept away by pure humility.
What we saw that night was far from what we had expected. I assumed that in our trench we would see people roaring for the morning to get to war, hearing people laugh taking the fun out of Germans and smell the delicious food prepared by the a low ranked soldier. I had heard that soldiers get brilliant treatment in war. But what I perceived that night was out of the ordinary. I was dumbfounded to see the utter contradictory in my perception. Instead what I saw was soldiers shot, wounded, bleeding; their blood merging with the brown mud on the floor. I heard the same soldiers crying of pain, their loud voices over shadowed the voices of gunshots and shells dropping over heading. Walking past these soldiers, I felt anguish. I looked into the eyes of James. He looked very different from an hour ago; from feeling pride and dignity, it was clear to see he was now frightened and felt helpless for the soldiers around us. So did I.
Next Morning.
The world around me was spinning when...