“A soldier's trade fundamentally is killing. However; we harbor this concept that they ought not actively enjoy it. That they treat it more of a matter of duty; not a pursuit of gratification.
Well… I enjoyed it.
Hunting is a man’s primitive instinct and I indulged in it in full.
I killed in plenty; I killed for pleasure.
I can only come up with two rationales behind this seemingly melancholic and beastly mannerism of mine.
One; that I hardly had an ounce of belief in the dignity of human life.
Either that or I was but a shell of a man, manifesting the physical exterior that maketh a man: the face, the hands, and the legs as well. Yet, somehow void and empty with regards to my inner man; completely deficient of a heart or the humanity that typical human beings are
naturally predisposed to.
I killed animals for sport and anarchists for duty.
Okay; on that I've admittedly lied.
I shot and bayoneted those savage “revolutionists” for sport as well. It would be useless to pretend that I did not derive a somewhat dark, twisted, psychopathic relish from seeing grown men dressed in rebellious red regalia cowardly scampering off in fear like chicken at the sight of a preying hawk.
What can I say; I was a bold, fearless, young, beefy yob that relished the adrenaline in danger, and found excitement in the exercise of lethal skills.
I did not engage in empathy, naught for man nor beast. Such mundane emotions; I was trained; made you vulnerable and weak... the sort of naivety that enemy camps are ever so fond of exploiting. The only thing close to an emotion I was allowed to express was loyalty. Not so much so the loyalty you pledge to your country...no...rather; it was “loyalty to my senior officers”. Loyalty to pot-bellied generals and superintendents that lavishly decorated their uniforms with medals of honor that we, their errand boys, were risking our lives for, “ grandfather paused as he dryly coughed.
