The Idealist

"..So as I wandered about, doing my hiding thing, ToySoldier approached me. I went off on a tirade about the journalists, since it's trendy and whatnot for us soldier types to look at them in disdain (and why not?). He studies me for a few seconds.

"You're burned out, aren't you?" he asks.

"Depends on your definition of burned out."

"You haven't even been on leave yet."

I think for a second. "Ok yeah, it's probably a safe conjecture then. I just might be burned out. Why do you ask?"

He laughs and says, "I read your last few entries."

"Yyyyyep. 'At'll do it."

I figured people would get annoyed and tell me to quit my bitching, but surprisingly, a lot of people like to hear the Curmudgeon it seems. And that's good, cuz since I took the gloves off to write, I've slept like a baby.

Out in sector, kids are crowding and playing by a long stretch of concertina wire (somewhat like razor wire, less sharp but will snag you up in a hurry). They reach their hands out for soccer balls, and a realization hits me:

Gunfire and explosions, concertina wire, foreigners in huge machines with Sci-Fi pulp comic equipment, it's all NORMAL to these kids. They've never known anything else. Their world is a landfill, in EVERY sense of the word. All of it, just an enormous brown mess, slopped together, the dirt to match the buildings. You have to look at the sky just to be reminded that there is more color in the world.

This "Cradle of Civilization" is enough to break anyone's spirit if you let it bore into you long enough. And maybe we're just going through the motions. That idealist in me, the one that's taken such a beating the past three years, the one that landed me in these boots and this ridiculous pixelated GameBoy graphics uniform, it starts to wonder what the hell I was thinking."
Unlikely Soldier

Since I have been rating milblogs lately I should not forget to mention this blog, which give most blogs a run for second. He was in fact my favorite blog till the surgeon showed up.