A Million Little Pieces

Humankind has witnessed many wars along the history, all of them with bloody and horrific outcomes, winners and losers, survivors and casualties, etc. As spectators, we may take any side by judging or supporting it; we are free to feel whatever we want about it. However, our opinions, no matter how strongly supported they are, will always remain as mere objective points of view as the experienceof being directly involved on a war exceeds every possible idea we may have of it. There is no possible way on earth that can give us a faithful picture of what is it like, yet soldiers or civilians’ stories may serves us as an important source to grasp a small part of it. Civilians’ stories are often taken more into account though as they are the innocent people entangled in other people’sconflict of interests. However, both soldiers and civilians are victims of the same war: civilians die, lose their properties, or watch their relatives die and soldiers die, get harmed or are forced to fulfill the role for which they prepared for whether they like it or not. Throughout this essay, we will see that not all soldiers are aggressive and cold hearted figures; there is also a mixture ofemotions towards civilians, war, and themselves that shows them as sensitive and reflective men in the middle of a conflict where they are always seen as the attacker or invader.
“I hate the idea of war and I can’t wait for it to begin,” (Denis Prior, Operation Homecoming, 2006). A short statement like this one can give us a clear idea of the contradiction in which soldiers live. Some peoplemay expect the second clause as coming from a soldier, but maybe not the second one as we may think that soldiers are used to the horrors of war or that they may enjoy it. However, this two clauses together reveal to us that soldiers may enjoy the adrenaline in the battlefield, but at the same time, they may reject the idea of killing people or may be afraid of being killed. “…we are desperatelyready to commence with a real one [war], however much we dread it.” (Denis Prior, Operation Homecoming, 2006) The anxiety expressed in this line and the ones that follow do not make him a murder, on the contrary, it makes him more human, one full of contradictions that admits his truly desires, but that is afraid as well of that cruel war. “Every day as we inch closer to the inevitable but stillunknown date when we will charge across the berm we grow more certain it is a terrible idea…”(Denis Prior, Operation Homecoming, 2006)
As it is impossible to generalize, there are actually soldiers who forget moral boundaries during war. “This is when the tourism begin; the soldiers start taking pictures of the corpses, stripping them of mementos –weapons, web gear, belt buckles, anythingthat you can carry easily ans wipe the blood off quickly.” (Denis Prior, Operation Homecoming, 2006) But, isn’t it necessary for soldiers to be cold-blooded when dealing with the enemy in order to defend a cause? It is clear that there are principles as the respect for life that no war should change, but it is inevitable that some soldiers become more reckless and indifferent towards death. This doesnot mean, however, that atrocities on civilians are allowed.
There are many areas in a soldiers life that affects them greatly. Hygiene, for example, is a regular task for most of us, but may be a luxury for soldiers. “I don’t even feel like talking about the latrine experience. All I have to say is that, after the first time, I went back to the tent and felt like either crying or lightingmyself on fire to remove the filth.” (Parker Gyokeres, Operation Homecoming, 2006) In most of the cases, these people have to live in almost infrahuman conditions where the basic needs (as having a shower in Parker’s case) cannot be met which eventually undermine human dignity at every level. When explaining how they live, Gyokeres explains: “Go to your vacuum, open the canister and pour it...