Ranger - Watery Grave

Dear Sarge:

I have enclosed a picture from my recent trip to Bermuda. I appreciated the car you left. Our friends there are well.

*

I find though my blade continues to find its mark that the man attached to it has dulled. Day after day of this grind - stretching out as far as I can see. My company is younger. They are filled with a passion for life (which I feel drifting out of my reach), and hatred. Uncompromising hatred. I congratulate myself that my mind is clearer, less emotional. When I take a life I understand complications. But what I hear from the soldiers I serve with is elimnationist rhetoric, and religious fervor. I have always been in opposition and now I am growing tired. Even when they say we must kill the rats - I disagree. Where is the pleasure in killing a rat? We are killers of men - men with real ambitions and families and pasts who have for legitimate or illegitimate reasons come into conflict with our way of life. I do not want to die at the hands of a man who believes I am vermin. I do take pleasure in knowing that these new soldiers will learn that life is less than clear, less than comforting. Or they will embrace insanity.

*

For me the lack of clarity and comfort have been transformed. First from a source of fear, then as a known truth and finally to providing consolation in a world where others appear to be engaged in a rebellion which is beyond my imagining.

*

I cannot fool myself into believing that there is a greater reward waiting for me. I do not try and justify my actions in that way, especially when I retrieve my knife from the punctured lung of a fallen foe. I can no more believe that I am heaven-bound than the essence of that corpse is in hell. Nor can I allow myself to believe as Deseilligny did that life itself has no meaning and that my actions can be divorced from reason. Perhaps I am too simple of a being, but I have tried to ascribe meaning to my activity which I know does not exist. I try to find joy in what I do even when what I do is not joyful. Rather than serving only myself, I can serve others and bend reality to my will in this way. Perhaps I am the one embracing insanity, though I hope that it is an innocuous variety.

*

I hope that you and Corporal can make some progress on your current charges. If my letter indicates anything I suppose that I am set upon by enemies more piercing than bullets. But today the sun is bright and warm and I go on.

*

I remain your friend.

*

Ranger