PATRIOTISM - Introduction for Three Deciding Colors

Perhaps a love for one's country isn't enough to win the war; perhaps it takes talent, heart, and a strong gut to take in something as beautifully ugly as the sight of war.

A last meal; something to be cherished and spent with family around a table, or a fireplace if you will, before you go out into the unknown recesses of damp and deathly shadows, awaiting fate, teasing him.

"Today is a good day to die," your neighbor, crouching and hidden well inside a thicket of dead weeds, says; "It's raining," you observe, and duck even lower to the ground, and your neighbor calmly replies, "Any day that I can advance towards the enemy and take a step for my country is, in my book, a damn good day to die." and you sit there, wondering what this man's been through that has given him this crazy idea (you are here to shoot bullets and win a war, not represent a country's power.)

Riots back home protesting fervently to bring home the troops; and then when the troops get back, you realize that your beloved has passed harshly into the hands of God by either wound or famine . . . is that how you want to leave them, young soldier?

Iron eyes glaring straight ahead, leveled at the bone knocker of Death's door; today you will not run away, as your neighbor's always by your side, and you will take Death's wrath like a man . . . a dead man.

Over barbed wire fences, designed to snag and tear through flesh, into the enemy camp you and your neighbor sneak in, though no one sees you; you are anticipating the enemy's bullets searing at your armored tissues, cutting them away with a "Pop," and a flash, or maybe several millions of them, but the suffered, agonizing moments never come, and you can't tell if that's good or bad.

Time ticking away as you and your neighbor are in the treetops, above the enemy camp; thousands of bastards marching in lines, grotesque sons of bitches; they make you sick, and you wish to go home, because your gun's not over your shoulder anymore (it's in your hands, and your finger's at the trigger.)

Inside your jacket you're sweating, dog-tags sliding up underneath your collar (and you're painfully aware of it,) you think; it is a good day to die, for a pipsqueak like me; but you hope to God it isn't true, because you know you left a family behind you, and someday you want to see that little sister of yours get married.

"'S no place for a kid like you," your neighbor, quite the talker, says (and you stay silent, because your eyes start to burn, and you know what he says is true) so you turn away and pretend that what you're doing isn't real, and your neighbor's just being a jackass; he doesn't make it home alive, and you akmost shared his fate (if it weren't for him shoving you backwards into the brush.)

Many others have given their lives for the sake of their country; "Why him and not me?" you ask, and actually expect an answer, foolish little soldier.