As I thought these things, I realised this was my life flashing before my eyes. Without knowing it, I had risen to one knee, and a bullet had pierced my abdomen. I was bleeding, but not severely yet: thus, I knew it was time.

I could never return to my love, and she would never take me back. I had never been good enough for her and I wasn’t now. What I could do was protect her, fight for the Queen and country she resided in. As I looked across the trenches I could see machine guns lined up and approaching enemy; smatterings of German was all I could hear; “Heil Hitler”, I heard, and I realised that these men had entered a frame of mind that was impossible to visit unless you were willing to risk your life for an ideology, for the people you love.

I respected these men who had killed my friends and shot me, in the respect that they had exceptionally strong will: however, they were fighting for the wrong side. I knew that fighting for a country is a trap; if you are born somewhere and it happens to be the wrong side and you are drafted, what can you do?

These men were, in all honesty, firing bullets at my country and at my love. This, this is when I realised that I could never be forgiven. This was a noble suicide. I would not let these men advance any further towards our trench. Reinforcements were twenty minutes behind my unit, and I knew that I had no reason to live any longer than those twenty minutes.

With these final thoughts, I stood to my feet, staggered as I adjusted to the newly-formed hole in my stomach, and I raised my gun. I sprayed bullets every which way, left and right, moving from different targets, changing position as best as I could, absorbing bullets all the mean while.

I was satisfied. Not because I was murdering life, but because I was fighting for my love; I was no longer capable of treating her right, nor myself; so all I could do was do my best to hold off these advancing Nazis, tooth and nail. If they were prepared to give their life, I was jumping at the chance – but only after I had stopped them all. This was to be my final act.

In the silence of eternity, of death, being forgiven did not matter. She would never know what happened to me, how I died, what I thought whilst I received the final metal jacket to the skull. All I know is that I laid down my life for her; that’s what she deserved.

Though I can never be forgiven, I know that I my tormented mind and body combined passion with skill, emotion with logic, patriotism with love. This is the recurring tale of the Unforgiven.