Dear Commander

My Commander,

A

As I look at the tiny, seemingly unimportant shoe, which lay smoldering on the brick road before me, I can't help but feel a slight pang of sadness, and a tight pain in my chest. I know the smoke and fires burning the buildings around me are no better, but this one tiny shoe, scorched black by the bomb, and dyed gray by the cinders, strikes me through and through. It's the largest thing that survived, other than the grieving skeletons of former shops looming on either side of me. A small child had been wearing this when the bomb went off, and now it would never be worn again. You wouldn’t understand the guilt I feel, Commander, as I don’t believe you’ve ever truly had a heart, except perhaps the one of stone that resides in your chest. And there’s no soul at all. Anyone can tell by looking in your dead eyes. You’re filth, and the lowest of the low, whether your rank is or not. You would say the shoe is what’s filth, and kick it across the ash-covered street with disgust. But me.. I can’t say I’m the same as you are, even though I can’t hold myself on any sort of pedestal, not with honesty. 

Never again would this shoe be worn to dance in the lush, green grass. Never again would it be worn to run, to play a fun game of tag and chase the prettiest butterflies, completely oblivious to their painful future. Never, ever again would an impatient, exhausted mother sigh as she forced it on her reluctant child, secretly amused as she kisses his small forehead, and wishes him well as he runs off to get to school on time. A school that will never be in session again. I can see it, a few buildings down 

I think about all this as I stare at it, and as I pick up the shoe, trying in vain to brush off the soot, I raise my eyes to the cold, gray sky, filled with smoke and thunderheads waiting to take action, and my silent tears join the raindrops falling on my cheeks as the rain starts coming down in sheets. It will do nothing to stop the roaring, raging fire, but it will hide my shame, and it will hide my grief. I may be a Nazi, but I never asked for this life. I never asked to be drafted into a war that should never have been caused. I never asked to kill without mercy. I was chosen and I’ll always regret it, with every ounce of the blood flowing in my veins, and every fiber of my horrible, horrible, accursed being.

Even now, in the moment that I write this letter of betrayal to you, I miss my own dear, innocent son, to whom I never really even got to be a wonderful father, and my wife, who I may never see again. They're back home, probably ashamed of their unfortunate relation to me, a sick and twisted, albeit unwilling, ally with a man who killed millions. Because they have morals. Probably a lot purer than even those which I claim to be my own. I can never clear my conscience, blacker than the destruction around me. Never.

So, as I raise the small child's damaged shoe to the furious sky in my pale, trembling hands, I cry. I cry hard for every child, woman and man who was slaughtered for their differences to a racist, raging tyrant. Slaughtered merely for an innocent, lovely belief. Slaughtered for their unique religion, their beautiful brown hair and eye color that marks them as Jews. And Jews weren’t even the half of those persecuted by your Nazis, most of which were forced into the military as I was, and will be punished for their crimes anyway. I cry for the loving families that were completely torn apart, shredded by their deaths, the stupid draft, and by this heinous war. Torn apart by the gas chambers and the stinking piles of burning human flesh, a scarring smell that I’ll never get out of my nose. I even begin to cry for myself, an innocent man made guilty by circumstance and, even worse, by force. I should have acted. I should have been worthy and capable of changing this before it could even happen. But I know that I will always be late again and again, so why not just refuse to even arrive? Especially in my state. In my battle-scarred, Nazi issued boots.

I will never, ever forgive myself for being on the wrong side of this war, but maybe, just maybe, someone divine up above will have the grace. I can’t clear my own disgusting, vile slate, but.. No one, not a single soul out there will hear my agonized screaming and my guilty sobs over the clapping thunder and the bomb sirens that won’t leave my ears, nor my conscience... Maybe they won’t hear the gunshot either. Maybe they won’t hear the last trigger I pull, and the last mistake I’ll ever make. But you’ll know. However, it’s too late to punish anyone else for what I’m about to do.

After all, without your knowing, right under your blind nose, I have made perfectly sure that the members of my family are already the safest they could ever possibly get. You cannot harm them any longer. You know, the only good thing I ever did for anyone was save those two, the only people I ever truly cared about and if I’m being completely and totally honest here, which I promise that I really am, they're the only family that I think that I ever will care about. You can’t control them. More importantly, you can’t control me. And you never will, ever again. See you in Hell, my dearest old Commander.

Your disloyal soldier, and the soon to be headless pawn in your vicious game of chess,

                            Me