In this war, everyone has a different reason to fight, a person or idea they make themselves believe is worth hall this, this suffering, this never-ending fighting and this ever-lasting battle between two sides, which both don’t really want to do this.
You need something, someone, to keep you going. You need to have this dream, this vision of perfection you want to achieve, in order for you to get up in the morning and continue the life that has been so rudely taken from you all those years ago.
Some fight for freedom, a noble cause of course, the thought that everyone will be able to walk on these streets, Jew or not, male or female, they don’t care. Everyone has basic rights they wish to achieve, because what kind of world are we living in, when little kids can’t go to school just because of the star they’re forced to wear?
Some fight for loved ones. The man next to me? He’s writing a letter to his wife and children, every week. He’s fighting for them, he didn’t enlist for his family, but you can be damn sure they are always in his mind, gun or not, whether he is in a battle or not, it’ll always be his family.
The young kid, he’s fighting for honour and pride. Maybe not as noble as freedom, yet interesting to say the least. He feels like he owes his country this, a country which not too long ago, wasn’t even ours to begin with. He thinks this is what he should do.
Others fight for shelter and food, the money they get. They have seen hard times, lived through them, and they saw the perfect opportunity to have shelter, rations and a pay check. You should’ve seen their faces when they were sent to other countries.
Some fight because they expected it to be fun, to have all the ladies swirling around them, to have them look at him, while their panties drop and they fall on their knees before him. That didn’t go as planned either, as I bet you could’ve guessed already.
Me? Why I’m fighting? I’d love to say something heroic, something brave, something that would make you think that it was the best thing I ever did, enlist in the army. But to be fair, I did it because I saw everyone who already enlisted look so honourable and shiny in their green suits, I was jealous. That’s a reason too, envy.
I know it sounds stupid, that I envied them. But all the reason’s above, they didn’t apply to me. I didn’t feel the need to bring freedom, because I didn’t expect myself to be able to. I didn’t have anyone I loved, except my mother, honour and pride had left me a long time ago, the shelter and food, the money, they didn’t draw me in. I was used to living without much gold and glitter, I didn’t do it for the ladies. I did it because of the most stupid reason anyone’s ever heard.
If I look back at myself, I swear to God I would hit myself so hard I’d fall through the ground and straight into Hell, where I belong. I was foolish to think the war was just another stupid decision that might work in my favour.
It didn’t.
The photograph shows the original Band of Brothers: Easy Company, US 101st Airborne Division. There have been multiple books written by the man that served in Easy Company and a short series (partly) directed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg
