English class blog

As I run, as I walk, as I limp
my eyes never seem to clear
all I see for years past and years to come
friends, family, blood
never taking a day off
I fight as though I were a kid
but no war alows kids in the field
all of us became men

I don’t quite get the point
about us killing one another
all we’ve been told
is that we believe in freedom
while they do not
and looking back at what I’ve done
I can’t imagine going forward
and I would rather die than go back

What a world we ive in
told what to do, told what not to say
when this war is over
where am I going to be
will I be home and alive
will I return in a wheel chair
will I lose my limbs to a cannon
or will I just die…

quotes-from-chapter-5.doc

This propaganda poster depicts Austrialia and Germany in a tug-of-war, a simpliar form of what’s really going on. The message in this picture, I think, is, “we are winning the war, but we still need your help.” This would act as a pretty effective poster back when the war was going on. People see that their country is winning, they might want to get in on the action thinking that there is less chance of getting hurt. Nowadays, people would find this nothing but a comic strip.

What is this war going to solve once it’s been finished? A question no one can answer. There’s screaming, shouting, and people running back and forth, in with open hands, out with another body. This can’t be right, why the people with their whole lives ahead of them…gone? Some return but only for a few minutes. Others never come back and some never even leave the battlefield. The only thoughts keeping me going are, “It’ll all be over very soon, then training can resume and not be interrupted. Eventually someone will take my place and I can retire.” My other thought is self-centered, “At least I’m not the one getting hurt.” But in fact I’m more hurt then a lot of the wounded. It’s hard to keep going like this. The wall that separates us from life and death is cooks food, which makes for a thin wall. More screaming. I can’t leave, not because my legs won’t move, but because leaving now would mean for certain shame, and as a corporal, that kind of shame equals the end of a career in more ways than one. The bullets have stopped flying. “Is it over?” I yell, and a line of men return, I sighed. “How many lost?” I asked. Silence. That was all I needed.