When you see big, strong, grown men break down, writhing, screaming, and moaning from unbearable pain, that's when you really see how nonsensical all of it really is. That's when you see it's all fake. And they told us it was all necessary and that we were the good ones, defending democracy and the world against evil. That we’d be protecting our mothers, daughters, and sisters. We didn’t protect fuck all. They lied to us. They send us to die. They didn't care for how long this war was going to last. They’d make their buck. In the end, they’d win. Because they’d live. And their sons would live. And their daughters. And while they sold us young men the hero's death, they were skiing in Aspen during the winters and they were eating well and fucking in their penthouses over the clouds.
I saw those that died. Their faces were gray. Their eyes were empty. Laying in trenches for days. They didn’t even care to get them out. They just left them there. In the mud. In the dirt. They were being eaten by rats. Flies crawling out their opened mouths. There was no grace. There was no honor. And we did it to the other guys. Just for the chance to stay alive. We had to hate them. And not think that they were just like us. You wouldn’t understand. You fucking couldn’t. So don’t pretend you would. You don’t know shit.
You keep watching the news. Believing their lies. It will feel so right. It will sound so logical. Another 10 billion in support. Another 30 billion in weapons. Tanks. Planes. Artillery. The enemy can’t win! The enemy wants to conquer the world! The president of their country has lost his mind! More weapons! More Money! More War! More Death! We must win! We are the good ones! They are evil!
They are sending kids to die in mud holes. Hundreds of thousands of mothers lose their sons. You don’t know what it feels like to shoot a man and see him drop instantly. Hit the ground and scream. Scream of pain. And scream from fear. Knowing that he had lost. Knowing that in a few seconds, he’d be dead. Screaming from anger! His daughter in his mind. My finger on the trigger. Pumping bullets on the guy screaming face down in the trench. Until he stops screaming. And some more afterward as well. You don’t know what it feels like listening to my government tell me how inhumane those people were, then finding a child’s drawing in his jacket. Written on it in Russian: 'Daddy come back home.'
You have no fucking idea what that feels like. You don’t know what we went through. Oh, you watched some news and they told you about some attacks, and some advances and a battle? They don’t show you the burned-out bodies on the street frozen in horror.
You think I don’t wonder every fucking day why the man standing beside me got his brains blown out and not me? You think there is any way to forget any of it? Any way to forget this deep, constant, laming fear that stuck with every single one of us for every single minute over there? I will never be the same again. None of this makes any sense anymore. If that is what people are ready to do to each other. And our leaders have no problem painting fields with body bags, filled with rotted corpses of young men. What the fuck do we live for anyway? If you have truly seen war. You understand the level of evil that exists in the world. Once you have seen that, you can never unsee it.
So keep watching the news. Keep voting for the liars. I hope you’ll never have to see what I had to see. Because nobody truly returns once they go to war.