Patriotism, they said, was the key to winning the war.
He figured that was why he was only a Private. He thought the key to winning was killing more of them than they did of us.
Those godless commies, they said, appreciated nothing. They didn't love their mothers, apple pie, or even (horror of horrors!) their country. They would run themselves into the ground, he was told, if the army didn't step in.
Staring into a gun barrel, his own pointed at a kid years younger than himself, he wonders if patriotism is really all it's cracked up to be.