War Diaries:

I am a soldier.

I remember the days when I first entered the army barracks. The older soldiers were happy to get a scapegoat to bully. They mercilessly picked on my wimpy body, my stooping stature and my stutter. I wasn't the only one to get picked on either; two other fresh faced rookies were bullied alongside me. Our mutual misery cemented an unlikely friendship between us and as we lay to sleep that night we exchanged introductions.

Mark was handsome, confident and excelled at everything from strategy to endurance training. His recklessness got him into trouble often enough but he was well liked by everybody. Tim was weedy looking and spoke so quietly that he needed to be asked to repeat himself. He was idealistic though, brave and highly patriotic. We were put together in the same unit from the very beginning. In the army your unit became your family – we ate together, slept together, trained together, did everything together.

At night we would create elaborate scenarios of war in which we emerged gloriously as heroes after vanquishing the enemy. Then exhausted we would lie back and talk for hours. We spoke about our idealistic dreams, we spoke of our families that we longed to see, we spoke of the future we would have had if we didn't join the army. We spoke of patriotism, of love for the country, of peace and the people who slept soundly in their homes because we existed.

We knew that not everyone on the outside perceived us as heroes, some viewed us as killing machines, mere pawns in a political chess game. It mattered not; they seldom realized that the safety they enjoyed was because we threw our bodies on the front line over and over again, fighting for them, sometimes dying for them. We were human shields, impenetrable fortresses, the last line of defense. If we fell in battle all was lost. No one would be safe.

Training was hard and exhausting. Some days it would get unbearable but our friendship helped us endure the worst. Seemingly strong bonds of friendship between people who never knew if they would live to see tomorrow.

When we went to war we fought for our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, but we also fought for many more, many that we have never ever set our eyes on. Love for the country spurred us on, this was our dream, the reason we existed.

One day in the midst of battle Mark and I found ourselves side by side. The enemy was gaining slowly; our troop was pushed into a corner while the general radioed for reinforcements. Heavy fighting ensued, in the middle of all the confusion I saw Mark go down with a bullet in his chest. Comrades were shot down and fell limply one by one, blood pooled on the floor, I ran screaming, ignorant of the battle around me. By the time I got to him the last vestiges of life had ebbed from his body and he was gone. My mind went numb with disbelief, it couldn't be, he could not have died, not Mark, but this was no place to mourn. To stay still was to die.

That night we climbed into the barracks silently. The stench of death was everywhere; hollow eyes mirrored the grief of our souls, we sat unmoving, unseeing. Tim was captured they informed me, his whole troop had been taken as prisoners of war. I closed my eyes and thought of naïve Tim getting interrogated, tortured. I wondered if he was already dead. For a moment relief swept through me, I was glad it was him not me. The next moment I felt sickened with myself.

I lay numbly reliving the horrors of the day. The absence of snores told me that I was not the only one awake. I thought of Mark lying dead on the battlefield, Mark who always emerged the best during our training days, so strong, so brave. I never thought that he would go before me; I had always imagined him as a survivor, victorious and undefeated. I turned and looked at their beds, empty, desolate. I missed their usual snores that told me that they were there, that they were alive. Without warning grief rose in my throat and I curled into a ball and wept unashamedly for my dead comrades.

Days passed at a stretch, the same sad story. Unknowingly we were changed, hardened by war, jaded by the ceaseless blood that poured without restraint every time we clashed. I was no longer human, I was a killing machine.

One day I got surrounded, backed into a corner, eight to one. Instinct, self preservation kicked in and I jumped behind a torn piece of wall.  Footsteps echoed loudly, the sound of impending doom. I was trapped, there was no escape. As I sat there clutching my gun, I trembled for the life that was going to get snatched away from me. A violent terror gripped me and I was rooted to the spot. Then I thought of the people I fought for, my country, my comrades who had bravely given their lives and strength poured through me. I would not die cowering behind a wall like a coward; I would fight till my last breath. My body stiffened with resolve stilling the tremors of my limbs and I emerged with a yell from my hiding spot. Eight waiting guns emptied themselves into my body and I fell backwards gracefully, towards the beckoning arms of death.

Don’t pity me, because I died completing my mission. I died in line of duty. I died to keep you safe.

But remember me. Remember all of us, remember our sacrifice.

I march with my dead comrades towards another life.

Remember who I was.

I was a soldier.