I killed him. I shot him in the head at point blank. He slumped down to the ground and there was cheer around. I saw his filthy grey t-shirt get stained a deep red as the blood pooled around his head and chest. That was an awful lot of blood.
I was raised like a hero on the shoulders of the watching crowd. I was being celebrated. I was trying to be happy, to join in with the happy and shouting crowds, but I was not able to. What were everyone so happy about?
I had taken the life of a man, a stranger. He was about 24 years of age.His eyes showed not an ounce of fear as I unlocked the safety clip of my pistol. As I squeezed the trigger I saw a slight glow in his eyes as if defying death. All our questioning had gone in vain. We tortured him to give us information on his troop but he chose to remain silent and bore the pain and misery with a steely defiant silence.
As the crowd took me on their shoulders celebrating the death of our enemy, I began wondering why I had killed him. He would have had a family back home waiting to hear from him. Maybe a mother like mine who nags him to get married, maybe a sister who pesters him to buy things for her, maybe a dad whose chest swells in pride when he says his son serves the nation.
Would his father still take pride in his sons choice to serve the nation, now that he was dead? I wondered. But the question remained why did I kill him? Because I felt that I was ridding the world of one more person who could harm my nation? That was to be the logical explanation, but my consciousness refused to accept my hypocrisy.
I had killed him because my commanding officer wanted me to. He asked me to kill the man because he had orders from his commanding officer. None of us really knew why we had executed a man. To us this was a statistic, one more number to the number of threats we had eliminated.
I was imagining his father reading a paper that said now the number of soldiers who had been killed now was last times count plus one. That was how the nation considered his son? The son whom he had so lovingly cared for and brought up. The son whom he thought would be there to do his final rights. The son whom he he had taught that serving the nation was an honour.
I didn't know what I was feeling. Was it guilt? Fear? Self realization? Regret?I was feeling remorse for the killing of an enemy. An enemy? Whose? I didn't even know his name. I didn't even know his intentions. Now I was confused as to who my enemy really was.
Here I was sitting in my tent thinking all this. The phone rang. My commanding officer was on the line. Another enemy had been captured and my services were required. I looked at my pistol, fresh from its hunt and all ready for the next.
I was harvesting sins. Sins for the sake of people who sat behind plush desks having scotch and cigars and decided to take a life because they felt that was required to win them the next election.
The pistol in my hand soothed me and whispered the solution. As I put the muzzle to my temple I could hear the sobbing of a hundred mothers and saw the tears of millions washing away all the blood that men like me had spilled.
Peace....
I was raised like a hero on the shoulders of the watching crowd. I was being celebrated. I was trying to be happy, to join in with the happy and shouting crowds, but I was not able to. What were everyone so happy about?
I had taken the life of a man, a stranger. He was about 24 years of age.His eyes showed not an ounce of fear as I unlocked the safety clip of my pistol. As I squeezed the trigger I saw a slight glow in his eyes as if defying death. All our questioning had gone in vain. We tortured him to give us information on his troop but he chose to remain silent and bore the pain and misery with a steely defiant silence.
As the crowd took me on their shoulders celebrating the death of our enemy, I began wondering why I had killed him. He would have had a family back home waiting to hear from him. Maybe a mother like mine who nags him to get married, maybe a sister who pesters him to buy things for her, maybe a dad whose chest swells in pride when he says his son serves the nation.
Would his father still take pride in his sons choice to serve the nation, now that he was dead? I wondered. But the question remained why did I kill him? Because I felt that I was ridding the world of one more person who could harm my nation? That was to be the logical explanation, but my consciousness refused to accept my hypocrisy.
I had killed him because my commanding officer wanted me to. He asked me to kill the man because he had orders from his commanding officer. None of us really knew why we had executed a man. To us this was a statistic, one more number to the number of threats we had eliminated.
I was imagining his father reading a paper that said now the number of soldiers who had been killed now was last times count plus one. That was how the nation considered his son? The son whom he had so lovingly cared for and brought up. The son whom he thought would be there to do his final rights. The son whom he he had taught that serving the nation was an honour.
I didn't know what I was feeling. Was it guilt? Fear? Self realization? Regret?I was feeling remorse for the killing of an enemy. An enemy? Whose? I didn't even know his name. I didn't even know his intentions. Now I was confused as to who my enemy really was.
Here I was sitting in my tent thinking all this. The phone rang. My commanding officer was on the line. Another enemy had been captured and my services were required. I looked at my pistol, fresh from its hunt and all ready for the next.
I was harvesting sins. Sins for the sake of people who sat behind plush desks having scotch and cigars and decided to take a life because they felt that was required to win them the next election.
The pistol in my hand soothed me and whispered the solution. As I put the muzzle to my temple I could hear the sobbing of a hundred mothers and saw the tears of millions washing away all the blood that men like me had spilled.
Peace....
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