n.
1. "into hell" is more than promise; it is a purpose, a driving need. it's the things that wake you at night, clutching your sheets, a scream laying strangled in your throat. it is legs that cannot hold their owner's weight. it's red eyes you can't stop seeing, and terrible days for rain.
2. you move through the same motions day by day. salute, serve, clean your gun, watch and listen and know all of this is a lie. in the hour of the wolf you will occasionally see eyes on your walls. you do not give them the pleasure of seeing you flinch.
3. your country will call you heroes, some through gritted teeth in the voices of those too accustomed to fear to feel hate, and some through brainwashed admiration. two through voices long used to grief and disappointment, with weary hearts that burn like the colonel's fire. you know the truth.
4. you do not win. in a war like this, that has been silently waged for thousands of years, there is no winning. blood has soaked every inch of your country, and there is no saving it. there is only moving forward, and the hope that maybe, one day, something new and better will grow in it's place.