For the Soldier There Is

Before You Read

This essay is opinion only. You are free to create your own character based on what you read. Gender, age, and ethnicity will not be given specifically so you may make your own observations and conclusions. This is done in the hope that you, the reader, will be more personally affected by the speech.
In this speech an infantry soldier gives his/her opinion about war and society during war. Please remember this is only the opinion of a fictional character and not to be taken as fact and is not meant to offend anyone or their beliefs. This is written for the purpose of argument and creative writing.


For the Soldier There Is…

Is not life great? With freedom and justice for all? That is of course for everyone but the soldier.

The definition of a solder is: an enlisted man or woman who serves in an army. What the definition doesn’t say is that once you are a soldier, you’re an insignificant creature and also a murderer. You are expected to die for your country, without question, if the need arises. You are also required to kill.

You may be thinking “Isn’t that why only a select few enlist into the military?”

Yes normally that is true. But when there is a draft, it’s not. You either join the military or go to jail. They hand you a rifle and say “Go on, go die in the name of freedom and all that is right.”

Toward the end of WWII the person next to you didn’t say “Com’on! Let’s go get ‘em!” They calmly squeezed your shoulder and said, “It’s ok son, stick with me and you can see your mom again.” And you and your comrade died inside because you both knew it wasn’t true. More than likely you would in fact die. It left you with a sick, hollow feeling. Like you were somehow evil because you had believed in a false hope, when really there had never been hope. Hope was just a concept only civilians had the luxury of. Soldiers had to face reality, no matter how bleak or gory it was.

It’s often said that a soldier is the person who hates war most of all. That’s not true, not entirely. The soldier with blood on his hands, and emptiness in his heart hates war most. In WWI most of the important officers coward far behind the front line, terrified of what we faced. Terrified of the horrible carnage we were forced to endure and survive. They were miles away from the bloodshed and only saw the people dieing as numbers on paper. They can never understand battle or how to hate it. And we, the soldiers, hated them for being weak; for hiding while we died. We hated them for not seeing and feeling what we did. Until you see your best childhood friend, shot to pieces with their blood all over your skin and cloths, you don’t understand. You can’t.

War can be thought of as a color. But it’s a color you as a civilian have never seen. You think you’ve seen it when you watch videos or look at pictures of battles. But I can honestly tell you if you have never been on a battle field you have never seen war. And I pray you never have to.

The best I can do to help you see it, to understand the horror of such color is to think of red. Think of dark, rich red. Picture that to represent the bloodshed and carnage of warfare. And bright red, for rage, hatred, and passion. Think of blue, for the sadness, depression, and fear that everyone feels at one point or another. Think of the blackest black you have ever seen. Picture that to be all of the death, and decay around you. Those are the colors I use to describe it. But you can’t picture the color itself. You can only see the individual colors; you can’t see them together as one.

I have been there. I have seen such color in all its titanic gruesomeness. It’s the most horrible thing to witness and I wish it on no one, not even my enemy. In battle you can sit for days waiting for the fighting to start. Hours drag by with no meaning. Hours you spend surrounded by corpses, rats, shell shocked men, and dark, depressing thoughts. The hours eat away at you until your mind and heart are as bleak as the landscape which surrounds you.

For every soldier, in every country, there is no freedom. You are not asked if you want to fight, if you want to leave you home, family, and friends. They hand you weapons and throw you into combat. You are trained to follow orders no matter what fear you have or what your opinion is. You can’t put in a two week notice or walk out on the job. No, you are told what you have to do, and like a dog you go forward, with out question. You die for people you have never meant, for people who continue to believe in hope.

You may think me harsh in my choice of words. But I ask you what of the hundreds upon thousands of people who have died for you, so that you may stand here and think me harsh? What about the mothers and fathers and siblings of those who have died? Governments give metals and money to the families of casualties in war. But I ask you; Is that enough? Can $10,000 and a piece of metal with cloth make up for the irreplaceable life of an individual? Can anything ever be enough to cover the grief one death will cause?

You as a society think war is the answer. I think of the man I shot today. Yes I am a killer. He prayed to the same god I pray to at night before I close my eyes. He said the same things I say every Sunday. I shot him because that was what I was ordered to do. I pulled the trigger in order to end a human life. I am no better then the killers police put in jail and sentence to death. And my enemy cried out for this mother as he lay dieing, just as so many of our men do as they die. I have come to realize, there is no difference between soldiers. There is no good or evil. There is no choice. There is only orders and rules with can not be broken. Orders and rules which all soldiers follow.

You think of war as the only way to end disagreements. I think of the endless fields of crosses I have seen. I think of those who are gone; who were never found. I think of those who were captured and tortured; of those who can never stand before you and explain what it is you have brought a upon the soldiers when you agree to go to war.

You say it is in the name of justice that we go to war, when that’s what the other side is saying in their country as well.

You as society want peace and prosperity and yet you send us out to fight and waste money on weapons and armor. You cling to an idea that can never be obtained. Peace is a concept. It is relative to a time period, and even in that period there is conflict. Maybe not bloodshed or war, but conflict interrupts peace. It can never be reached. So we die for nothing. We die for your illusion.

I am here today to beg you not to forget those who have died. Stop thinking of the people who lived; the people who got metals for valor, and heroic deeds. Stop thinking of the heroes as the people who came home to their families. Think of the people who have ceased to exist for your false hope. Think that they will never know life after this ordeal. Think of all those different people and tell me there lives were worth it. Tell me they had to die so you could continue to believe in peace for another century; until there is another war to end all wars.

Since life first started there has been conflict. We fought over food, shelter, territory, goods; the same worthless things we fight over today. And I ask you know, with blood on my hands, with dirt and mud, and grief all over me; will my death be worth your unachievable utopia? Will my death be worth anything to you at all?

“Possibly,” you say.

“As long as it preserves the peace.”