The sky was consumed in smoke, and once again it filled my lungs as the gunfire filled my heart. Once again fear and adrenaline burned through my veins and blacked out my vision, turning me into what they always wanted me to be: a machine; a heartless, ironclad machine fueled by glory and the good ol’ red, white and blue. There was so much sound. I couldn’t see far enough to look into the eyes of my enemies. It was something that shouldn’t have bothered me and that I should have been used to, but it did bother me. And there’s nothing about murder I’ll ever be able to get used to. Every shot I fired, whether it found its target or not, ended something beautiful; severed the magic of a human life, and destroyed roughly twenty-five years of memories. It was something I begged I could change every time the shot died out. But I couldn’t. And neither I nor my poor victim will live long enough to see the peace we’ve fought for, but the promise that peace would one day ring through our nation was worth fighting for. It was worth dying for.

Growing up in the Deep South made killing easy. There was always something that needed to be killed, or needed to be found and then killed. So when Uncle Sam came knocking on my door it wasn’t just my badge that helped the sight of blood melt into my memories, and let me continue my duty. But let me tell you, war has a funny way of changing a strong man into a scared boy. And Lord was I scared as the bullets shattered the sky and dove through the air, barely missing me, but always finding someone. Those “barely misses” were damn close “barely”s. The killing part didn’t bother me all that much though. It was just another blue coat trying to kill me. That simple. Killing ain’t anything hard, it isn’t some elaborate equation or mystical labyrinth; it’s just shoot or be shot. That simple. You could get all deep and technical about why I’m killing, or whom exactly I’m killing, but it still just boils down to the animal fact that he’s got a loaded gun that’s itching to make my day a whole lot worse. And my job is to make sure I keep my smile, and rob him of his. It’s nothing complex, it’s as easy as breathing. Kill or be killed, that simple.