"War, HUH, what is it good for? Absolutely,"
Civil unrest back home reached a fever pitch.
The year is 1969. The draft is in full effect. New recruits are flown in every single day. The older GIs among those "welcoming" them treat them like sh!t. They've been around long enough to see plenty of men join the meat grinder. It's a harrowing experience, to hear all this talk about going to war as a noble thing. To hear how many medals you're going to bring home, how many Vietcong you're going to kill, how proud everyone is going to be when you get home. Then, on the other side, it all flips around. You're not welcome here. The scent of gunpowder drowns out the crackling radio and screams of the dying. They're bombing out another hill on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Another salvo of explosives, high-impact, napalm burning in the jungles, setting everything on fire. Vietnam is a graveyard. We're all just looking for a wet spot of ground to lay inside of. We're just bodies sent here to enforce something these people will never understand.
Once we step into this green hell and see our first army buddy fall face-first into the mud, we finally understand the meaning behind all those protest songs, and the reason why we're all here in the first place.
"Nothing."
---
"Come on, Doc, patch me up real quick,"
Sammy Baretta. Tough bastard. He usually manned the heavy guns, chewed on bullets, the typical stuff. He tattooed "pain is my bitch" in all caps across his back, and right now it applied, what with him having a bleeding stump where both of his legs used to be. Idiot stepped on a mine.
"Shut up, Sammy. We have to get you out of here, otherwise you're gonna die. I need a stretcher! Get me patched through to headquarters, now!"
Being a medic sucked. Hard. Sammy grabbed James by the collar of his uniform.
"F*ck that. I'm dying here and now, doing what I do best, and that's being a thorn in the side of the yellow man," a sadistic smile. He pushed James out of the way, pulling the trigger on his rifle. A retaliatory shot through his head from a sniper, and it's over.
Nothing heroic like he wanted. There are no heroes here.
---
Everybody hates it. Riots in the streets, from what's passed around the camp late at night. Stories of political unrest. Ma and Pa storming Nixon's office, looking for the keys to their sons' chains.
It's all just warm fairy tales. It's something to help keep the hope of this war ending soon alive.
---
"They shouldn't be buried here," James heard himself say.
"I know, but if we hauled all the corpses back home, we'd have no room for the soldiers who are still alive,"
Jethro Tully. Good man. Good medic. He had a cousin and a brother in this war. Buried them in '66.
"They were twins. Jack was older by a second. A split second, could you believe that?"
"I know James. Come on, we're needed back at the tents."
---
"Someday we're all going to go back home, and put all this sh!t behind us. It's going to be nice. Hot food, warm bed, no more sleeping in dirt with our hands on our d!cks. We'll be just fine."
People often stress peace, but war does not simply vanish into thin air. Humans are a predator species. We see a threat and go to any lengths to eliminate it. That is our policy. If war is an enemy, then how do we solve it if all we've ever known is violence? Peace is not an easy solution for us. It will never be. We will shed each other's blood until Judgment Day and no amount of food surplus rallies or health benefit charities is going to change that.
I took up the stars, the stripes, and the shield not only to protect the values and customs of my country.
I did it because I want to establish America as it was meant to be. This confusion and chaos between mutants and humanity is just going to devolve into another war, one in which either side is just as liable to fall under the pressure and succumb to genocide and pain.
I don't want to see that happen. No one does, no one except for those who directly profit.
The footmen don't profit. The people stuck in the trenches, giving their lives for something they love and cherish, don't profit. They're scarred forever by the horrors they are forced to witness in place of those who do profit.
The tyrants.
The oppressors.
The fiends, the vermin of the world.
I have bled. I have seen too many good men and women bleed. It's not fair. This world is not fair, but I intend to change that.
This is a rallying call to everyone who wants to make a difference.
This is not a team nor is it an organization. It is a simple plea for help, a cry for mercy ringing out from all the corners of the free nations of the planet we humbly call Earth. As one human being, no, as one PERSON to another, I want to bring down the walls separating those with power from those without. No more war. No more scrambling for peace. This road is inevitably covered with blood, as all roads are.
Please.
Just one more push for union.
Don't let this turn into another decade of suffering.
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