Not a sacred warrior,
Nor with a bayonet blessed by God,

Not even a human being,
Just a simple peasant….. a surrogate, 
A sacrificial lamb, a frightened child,
Chosen by the rich to be an instrument of war,

A cold-blooded, battle-trained beast,
A mindless savage ordered to kill,

A molded piece of steel, an object……. a gear,
A very small cog in a far-reaching engine of death,
An insignificant fleck in the overall fabric of life,

A negligible notch on the handle of an enemy’s gun,
A mere afterthought for those who extol the wonders of war,
An unkempt grunt,
A lonely gutted, blood-spattered corpse lying on the ground,
Something like the trivial crush of dead dog on a lonely country road,
Dead meat…………. with a tin tag,

A sacred breath of life having been stripped from its mother’s womb,
A father’s pride…. his very best friend,
Someone whose name is Abdul, Mohammed, Ishmael, Ibrahim, or Hassan,
Or then again…….. perhaps even Mike, John, Mark, Eddy, Ben, or Bill,
A world diminished by the loss of another precious child!

A Soldier’s Prayer

Dear Lord,
I am but a soldier,
Caught up in a world,
That I do not……  that I cannot understand.

Just a simple man or woman,
Having been thrust into a war,
Between two foes,
Each bent upon destroying the other.

I have been told,
That we are good,
And that they, the enemy,
Are evil.

Foreigners each,
Suspended,
Midway,
Between the two.

Dear Lord,
Guide me in thy ways,
Teach me how to think
Tell me how to live my life.

Grant me the strength to stand up,
Even the courage,
To follow in thy ways,
The wisdom to walk in your footsteps.

That I might take my place,
At your side,
That I might share with you,
The passion of “the cross.”

That I might learn to love my enemy,
That I might learn to stand in his shoes,
That I might understand that we are not different,
That we are each the same.

That I might understand,
That we are soldiers……mere robots,
That we have been trained to hate,
And to want to kill each other.

I pray that you would,
Take me in thy hand,
That you would mold me…… remake me,
To be more like you.

Dear Lord, teach me to love my enemy,
That I might extend to him my hand,
That in the presence of your love,
We might become as one.



A Soldier’s Lament

Home,
Thank God,
I am home at last.

A return to sanity,
And the security of knowing,
That I am home.

An opportunity to begin anew,
To rebuild a life,
Once torn apart.

Nevertheless constrained, even forced,
To recall the memories… the feelings,
Of yet another time.

The agonizing reality of having had to battle an enemy,
One that I never knew,
One that I never even wanted to know.

Thinking back,
About all of those moments,
The choices I seemingly had to make.

The orders,
To shoot and to kill,
My enemy.

Some inanimate object on the horizon,
An outline, a moving target,
A human frame……  “but certainly not a human being.”

Squinting eyes,
Peering through crosshairs,
Ready to fire upon my foe.

Flickering,
Conscience,
Subdued.

Triggered discharge,
Fired missile,
Shouldered recoil.

No blood, no guts,
No sounds,
No movement.

Just the cold and dreary silence,
Of knowing that I did a job,
That had to be done.

But once again,
I am,
Home.

No more officers ordering to kill,
No more bombs “bursting in air,”
Not even an enemy with whom to shed my blood.

Yet all alone……. separated from my comrades,
The wretched few who understand the horrors of war,
Those who can share the raging pain of an aching soul.

But now as a man,
Not as an innocent child frightened by what might someday be,
But rather as a soldier tortured by what once was.

Sitting and starring with conscience in hand,
Asking the single, most fundamentally-haunting, question of my life,
Why?