The march unto welcome death is a slow one indeed. Four days and four nights have passed by us, and still we are nowhere near where the sky rains fire and the men scream, their faces in the mud. Is it for victory we fight or something else? Defeat, perhaps for some strategic purpose? Liberty, to live our lives as we wish? Democracy, a system of government that we prefer? Survival, to weed out the weak?

Unbeknownst to us is a mystery like none other, one that decides our fates from a seat up high, above the misery and death that we march toward. Did we know what we were to fight for when we decided to become another ant in the line? Or are these things elucidated upon the battlefield, where sweat, blood, fire, and steel reign? Where the hulking, colossal machines rule the earth and tread upon the corpses of the fallen?

As we give our lives for the murky intentions weaved around us, our existence becomes shrouded in numeracy and statistics. There will be shrines erected for us, sepulchers dug, and funerals held, yes, but these temporal things' meanings are evanescent, transforming more and more into symbols of other things, perhaps of peace, perhaps of the fortunes of war. As the generations rise and ebb, flow and die, those who remember us for who we were pass away, and there will come a time when we pass into an irrecoverable state in the realm of abstract beliefs and symbolism. From people to icons; do we transcend all to become immortal or are we lost to the murky depths of the sea of memories and then buried in the bottomless sands?

Nay, it must not be so, for though those who will know us only as the millions who have died for kings, countries, and gods will be many, there will also be those who will wonder what we would have said, what we would have done, had we been alive still. Those who ponder such things… Is it for them do we fight? Is it to be remembered or even to be the subject of cogitation in the slightest? To forever be encased in the minds of those who will think of us in wonder?

Who knows the answers to these questions? Not I, for I am merely one plagued by the luxury of having too much time to think. Onwards shall I march, for another four days and four nights, unto welcome death. Plagued by haunting ghosts and eyeless vultures, I shall embrace the battle as one possessed by the hope of salvation, for that is what I see in it…

Yes, that is what I fight for: the long-sought sleep of the dead.

I think I'm going to write about my fascination with death next.