Judged for Duty: The Face of the Lost

If you want to kill, join the military legally.

That's the thing about soldiers—it looks like they are upstanding citizens, but they are trained killers. They are veterans at stalking their prey through the blood-stained trenches. And we reward them.

Whether it's a scorched desert bristling with crumbling, yellow-encrusted sand, they can slaughter anywhere. Soldiers wait months to feel the slightest movement, like a slow-growing plant, enveloped in deathly heat, even in a freckled sauna.

They can fight in the thick forests with limbs stretching for miles, basking in the dirt-filled environment. They light fires to make their prey more confident. Without remorse, they will asphyxiate their enemies like cobras. Their rifles camouflage into the humid, wet wilderness as experienced killers scope out the enemies, much like a poisonous flower, glittering but deadly. A sweet aroma brings misery.

The fabulous beaches provide floods of endorphins, allowing people to fight. With glee in their hearts, they rush towards a gleaming gun. A rich and regal stream remains enriched with blood; it turns into a bloody red streamlet, coursing with the damp carnage of innocents. Some of them perish in the line of duty, under the orders of their masters and even the heavens. Bravery gets rewarded.

A sergeant greets the crying mothers and fathers, drenched in glass tears. Telling them that their sons and daughters fought for a revolutionary idea called freedom warms their hearts. However, explaining that they violently died to keep up a veneer of freedom by slaughtering citizens in other nations would break and wound hearts. The sergeant tells them that their son and daughter may now rest eternally under the ground they had given their lives on to keep free. Those same skeletons are rotting with forgotten memories beneath the same soil coated with bullets. They suffered pain and death as it was the ultimate price they paid.

As living soldiers, dying soldiers, and veterans, they hear the voices of those they killed roaring in the catacombs of their memories. Their burning words are bestowed, breaking layers of flesh, shattering a harlequin dream. Love quakes like a quasar far-away, glimmering in another world. Flashbacks arise. Like leafless branches torn by bitter winter winds, veterans stay eternally scorned.

Fireworks wisping reminds them of raining gunfire on innocents without umbrellas. When they are supposed to be celebrating the Fourth of July, their bones jiggle, their minds scream, and their hearts cry for comfort, but that cannot happen.

They cannot wipe the dirt off with a shower as they stay covered in a bloodbath.

With age, their pale skin flakes like leaves. Their fingers shriveled to bark. Bloodshot eyes glow, knotholes harder than glass. Waxen hair has lost its seedy appearance.

They started as gyrated eaglets, but now they are rampant monsters.

The only reward was knowing where they would go after death.

Despite their heinous crimes, real-world monsters are still human and think—no matter how often humanity conjures the same lie that they are unemotionally feeling "robots." Everyone feels, but whether they ignite action is another question.

War makes a comatose soldier feel pride in his skills as he aims the barrel at the enemy. Perhaps it does not matter whether soldiers remain stewards of the People or lunatics of the State, looking for manifest destiny to make a mark on history. Maybe it matters when the State's leaders stay twisted in high places, eclipsed by power and broken by desire. They latch onto their twisting temptations like moths to a flame. But soldiers have a right to choose. They signed up, trained, and were given medals of honor, some ammo, rifles, and a message to fight for their nation, even to die.

War claims to be the truth. It is damning to feed the truth with morsels of lies. There are tranquilizing truths emanating from everyone: prime ministers, elephants, ants, and even from the highest peak to the lowest valley. Despite this, the men in high places are training their soldiers to believe they are the truth to defend a nation!

Luminous self-righteousness sparkles; stained tongues gleam with a savory vendetta of misleading truths. The world crumbles as power rises.

All sergeants and corporals say they're right, but they're wrong!

Those who serve the war masters feed on a mush of insecurity, dampened by selfless conciliation that prevents them from understanding their opponents! Marred by fruitless endeavors to find the truth, they rode off into battle to slaughter any unbelievers. Despite war's impact, change is impossible in this fog of ignorance, as their messages call out to join them! To fight for their nation and to be rewarded once and for all!

Many soldiers wanted to throw down their weapons. They wanted to shelter an era of peace and prosperity, but why didn't they do it? Because they had no reason to do so!

No one could betray their country or themselves. As a result, soldiers would rather kill people than disobey orders. Waving blue-tinged steel fragments at the vulnerable, taunting them with absolution, must have felt stellar.

They could freely take another life with power and get rewarded for it.

They remember the foes they slaughtered in the name of freedom. They overflowed with precious energy; their foe's eyes glowed with hope, a desire to help their country. Mothers and fathers mewled. Helpless, abandoned children wept for them. Embedded boroughs flourished in graveyards, feeding war's appetite.

Lionizing candles glowed, a glinting sea in a moonless field.

In the saccharine mulch, pinhead roots consume flesh like maggots.

Soldiers enlisted in a parade of death, becoming undertakers without any sense of supplication. A broken crown of thorns has paralyzed them, choking the blood from their heads. They stayed drawn to the abandoned—the forgotten—the dead. They hoped for forgiveness as ghosts haunted their spirits.

But, even with his most significant remorse, the soldier feels the slightest sense of satisfaction, knowing he made a difference for his country. Alas, they protected the life and blood of their nation: the people.

A quote from Voltaire echoes, "It is forbidden to kill; therefore, all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

In unmarked graves, they wept, but as they strode into the afterlife, an inner voice whispered, "Thank you all for your service."