text: The air bursts with the bright colors of the most beautiful sunset, as birds scattered, bending and twisting through the air, singing as they slice the red poppies among the holes dug by the force of explosives made by men who don’t understand what it’s like to watch the man next to you break under the force of a concussion, jacketed by that color of sunset, those cruel birds ripping and tearing through a man that hours ago you were sharing a meal with. The quiet orchaestra of a calm night broken, crushed under the weight of 10 pound shells that make the air scream and the earth shudder as both men and soil are flung as equals, both broken and dead. We sit in dug-outs, able to eat and yet starved, not of food but of the sun, of air that hasn’t been through the lungs more than once. Some sit nearest the corners, some shaking, others rocking, lost in their minds, though they’ve not yet been lost to shellfire. Even among those still under control, we shiver, our hands tense and squeeze. Though we may have the air of calm, we feel lost ourselves. We used to tell stories of peace-time, of what we’d done and planned to do. No more. Those stories hurt, poisoned the heart, and broke the mind. We knew they were true, and yet how? How could these stories be true? How could any of it be true, surrounded by this hellscape? Those stories we can believe, even the painful ones, the bad times, seem so light-hearted and docile compared to what we do now. We are no longer men. We are monsters, killers, and yet, in our minds, no more than a kilometer away, there is a more terrible evil than ourselves, but they must remain faceless. We do not dare make them human, or we will be more terrible than they have become. Have we all gone mad? Surely asking such a question is a reminder that we are not. Surely since we ask these things of ourselves it must imply we are not too far gone. The frightening visage of the uniformed man across from me reminds me I am still yet human, as his shaken gaze peers at me behind his gas mask, the soft vent of a breath through filters being all the signs that the man is still alive. Perhaps he thinks the same of me. We dare not make eye contact with one another, as maybe, maybe it will awaken something within the other man and he should want to attack me, or perhaps I would to him. My train of thought is broken as I see it, softly at first. The slow, creeping grasp of gas. In our states of mind, it seems almost alive, reaching and hunting us with its whispering tendrils. I hear the man across from me, I hear his breath begin to quake, and my own along with his. What if our masks fail us? What if we die, sputtering and starved of breath, retching our own blood and lungs as it tears our bodies apart? I must think no more, we must stand. The man across from me follows suit, as we grab our rifles and prepare for the assault. Part of us wish for this to be our chance to strike out at an enemy that torments us, sending harrowing mortar fire followed by gases that seek out the living to seize in front of their comrades. Part of us wish for this battle to end this agony. I do not know anymore which side I fall in. I try my best to push aside this thought as the blare of raid whistles are heard in the distance. My hands lie still. The man that was across from me steadies as well. The time has come to end our madness. They are here.