"I can feel the bullets flying from automatic guns behind me...shells falling to the dirt road from aerial combat...the stench of dying men arouse my senses, disgusting my heart. My soul wears itself thin, crying for the loss, but begging for the future. I force my fingers on the cold steel, fear in my eyes, a brick in my throat, as I kill the natives...the enemy. Someone's brother, someone's son, falls to my bullet...and I wait for the one with my name engraved on the shrapnel to be left in my head. The only intelligence left would be my personal self destruction...to save another from my fate - yet, a soldier will follow behind me, in my footsteps."
"Either way I take a life. Mine or his, either way, a man is killed. Either way a life will end, as two more are born. And, as I run through mud, carrying a heavy pack upon my back, I wonder if the weight of death is worth the price of life...or if mass suicide is all we'll ever make of it. I'll probably never know...most of us won't make it through the might. We're all playing Russian roulette with five chambers full. One of us will survive, but at what price? At the price of five hands, or will it be ten? Five sons, five brothers...the band still plays on...the funeral still occurs."
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"Dirt rained down upon us like hail in a hurricane, drenching our already soiled faces with a new layer of blood, guts and mud."
"A few of us having trouble remembering our names. They don't mean a thing out here until one needs to be identified for shipping or discharge. One soldier, who's been here since I have, has 5 or 6 sets of tags...lost soldiers dog I.D.'s now carried on without them. 'After all', he says, 'they're dead, so why should they care?' He has a point. Still, most of us don't care when we're alive...for in some way, we're still all just lost souls in a foreign land of destruction."
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"Today I thought I felt a bullet slam into my back...it was only a sharp pain. Nothing hit me, except maybe fear. Possibly the truth coming from behind...I know it's not reality. You can't be real and fight for your life. You can't succumb to sanity without first realizing the sane - and we are far from instruction. We are the foot soldiers of doom. We are wide awake in the soul of a nightmare."
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"As I come upon a city full of lights...I realize it's set up for us, by the army, for our entertainment. A small carnival in the midst of complete destruction. We are the puppets being played by larger puppets. We are the end result of a circus gone awry...they sent in the clowns, here we are. Let us entertain you. Let us make you cry."
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