Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds.
By Lauren Nicole Kilcourse.

I come here for peace. To give my respects for all those brave soldiers, they never deserved to die. Yesterday, one of the saddest days of the year and today I stand alone. In the spaces which held so many. I cant bare to see all of those weeping mothers, daughters, comrades and the audacity of governments who started these wars who then come paying their 'respects'. It hurts to remember. Holding this poppy, laying it to rest as I did for so many of my friends... To forgive the mistakes of 'leaders' and to accept how blindly I followed the orders of corrupts governments. But to forgive you can then accept and in some ways forget...

The sight of the enemies faces played with my emotions, the claustrophobic sensation rippled around me, so powerful yet invisible. Then it hit. It struck all of those around me taking my sense of certainty away. It left me standing there trapped in what felt like an invisible bubble only allowing me to watch as the events continued to unfold. I picked up my gun and started shooting, not thinking... not caring... All my comrades were gone. Their bodies still. Emotionless. The horror of it turned to pleasant beauty as their pains of life, gone.

As i look at the monument I realise now that no war will end all war, that all the dying is not done, all the killing is not done. And the kills are peaceful, History is violent...

The dark eerie, desolate streets once were towns and then just rubble. All of those innocent people, gone. Laid waste by the greed of governments, men laid dead on the ground like fallen pawns on a chest board.
Men in positions of power using populations as cannon fodder - why couldn't they see the effect they had on so many lives in the favour of the few? We were thrown in the fray for a hidden agenda that the common man will never know.

Coming to the monuments, they should be able to see now, all the names on the plaques, all of the laid poppies yet wars still...