Today we go to the field of battle.
So, boys, gather round me.
We’ve been through the darkness of the bloody nights together,
We’ve fought through cold, under enemy fire,
Through heat, above the corpses of fallen brethren.
Now, today, we go out onto the final field – The last struggle.
Before we brave the horror before us,
That great horror,
I’d like to pray for all of you.
It’s not my own prayer,
But one passed down by the major before me
And the major before him.
So gather around,
And let me pray for my soldiers.
…
…
“Oh, God in Heaven,
Have mercy on these piss-ant pussies,
For they know not what they do.
They thought they’d be a soldier,
Come out here and pull a trigger as much as they pull on their dicks,
But now they’ve reached a breaking point.
Now, the climb is starting to look harder
Than bringing down the whole mountain.
Well, big fuckin’ deal!
Only sissy-boys take it in the ass like that!
They bend over,
They’ll wish it was my dick
and not my steel-toed boot!
That’s how we play it,
‘Cause better a foot than a bullet.
These crusty old feet used to be on the front lines,
Stuffed in their same blood-crusted boots
With artillery spraying
Like angels’ piss from a Heaven
Whose gates have busted open
Not unlike my ruptured bowels,
Spitting out excrement.
Still, I fought,
And they have, too.
But we have sinned, Father,
We’ll never get to Heaven
Because we are that excrement!
Or, at least, we are in the eyes of our fellow countryman
Who call us murderers, interventionists,
College drop-outs, and all around
Anti-humanitarians.
They hate our guts!
What are we thinking,
Killing the poor terrorists, the misunderstood ‘other,’
Keeping down the man who shouts ‘Death to infidels,’
The one who literally lives in a state
Belonging to infidels?
I tell your troops what they’re thinking
Because they all have the collective brain density
Of a marshmallow peep
According to the world.
They’re thinking, ‘I’m doing this
Because it’s how the world works
And will always work!’
And they’re smack on the money.
But them back home don’t think so.
They think the world
Is a plain of daisies
And that everyone would be happy if they’d just
Skip on through it.
But that’s just plain pigeon shit,
And they’ll hate us forever for it.
They’ll hate us forever –
Doing what man has done for forever –
Since their so-called ‘progress’
Is just an escape,
A blind eye turned
To questions concerning life and death.
They fire their blustering bullets at us –
But help us remember, all they have are titles,
Identities,
And we are soldiers,
Our identity, brothers
Bred from centuries fighting against titles.
My prayer is that we wake up
And realize that though the world
Might have left us behind,
It went forward because of our desire –
Now it’s time for us to go forward with it,
Or against it,
But always forward.
Let us not do ourselves the disservice of surviving abroad
Only to die in our beloved country,
Else we’re only worth returning to the dirt
We were descended from
And spent our lives protecting.
May we take that dirt
And build a new land for ourselves,
That we might be men again.
In your name,
Against the name of those who see themselves
As gods back home,
Amen.”
…
…
A harsh prayer is better to a soldier
Than gentle assurance.
And now, onwards – Into the final battle
My troops
My brothers,
Always onwards.
May you have a safe flight home
And your families welcome you better than the world will.
Morning's Early Dark 