Our greatest enemy is our indifference.

By Lucas Dunham

Dear Uncle;

The similarities I have seen in your war and mine, surprised me, to be honest, which has led me to believe that all wars look different; terrain, generation of equipment, and so forth, but the way men feel about combat, and each other, has stood the tests of time. I’m almost positive you would have seen yourself in me a few short years ago; my eagerness, anxiety, and readiness for something I did not understand. And even now, how war has changed me. 

I think men who fight in wars like ours end up the same, shells of who we once were, struggling to return to society which now seem alien to us. We can only admit this to each other and men like us, who have changed from what we have seen and what we have done. Sadly, memories of war will follow us to the grave. The people around us will never understand, soldiers from all generations who have fought in war will wake at the sound of thunder, and we will hear our fallen friends on the quietest of nights. Rain will remind us of our muddy foxholes, and the smell of diesel will remind us of a time when our innocence was lost. Now we attempt to understand war, but what we do not know is that war cannot be understood, it is a scourge upon the earth, and our nature will never let us escape it. Our greatest enemy is our indifference.