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Writer's pictureShalom Kendi Mbae.

Errand Boy In Arms.

Updated: May 23, 2020

“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.


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