In the Mind of an Imaginative Military Sniper

Ortona, 1943.

These Red Patches are everywhere. They are most brave despite incompetent command. My duty is to shoot the enemy down. They are, to me, but mere cardboard figurines. They run from post to post. Shattered house to shattered tank. My job is to shoot them down.

It is indeed a game. As I speak, I have just hit one. I hear his screams. I have become callous to such cries. The necessity of my survival dictates this to be so. War is mad and natural. I see that he is in pain. His comrade moves to save him. Should I gun them both down? I am a soldier. I do what I must. This tender moment will be met with fate.

And so it has. Both lay in their arms. I do not like that all of a sudden my emotions have shaken my nerves. Am I going soft? What will my superiours do to me if they find out? Could they find out? The fatherland must be protected - indeed expanded. No? This is what they tell me.

Why am I in a land so beautiful to complete this task? As I stare at my dead enemies, I wonder who their friends were. Who they loved and who loved them. What sports did they play? What did they do for work? How would my family feel if I were to be mowed down?

In an instant, I realize for what? Was it my people that started this madness? I'm on foreign soil shooting people and their allies for doing nothing more than to protect it. The mortar shelling is beginning to affect my senses.

All of a sudden I am overwhelmed. I am no longer looking at cardboard boxes but human beings. I see the rest of the platoon make an escape. I see their fears. All they want to do is go home. They have seen enough depravity.

I can not and will not shoot. I deliberately miss. Sudden pause and silence. I am confronted by the enemy right before me! How!? Behind him I can see the soul of the dead rising. Can they forgive me? His eyes! It has the simultaneous look of a ravaged wolf and scared child! Green as pure arctic water. How does he see me? Does he see the emptiness of my soul? Or my new found love of the human spirit? What will he do to me?