Thoughts of a wounded soldier

You would think it a simple operation but with so many people in worse condition than you; all you can do is sit and wait and wait and wait. This place is so bland, the only vibrant color being the red ruby spots on the bed linen. How those sheets terrify me...

They change the sheets periodically, every two days I think. They bring back the originally dirty linen, crisped, starched and bright white. Renewal, something that we cannot do like the sheets. If we are stained, we are stained forever more. Stained by experience, stained by sin. Some sins can never be forgiven.

I've been here a month, waiting... if only we had something to do, but then we do not feel like playing games anymore. The war is nothing like I expected it to be, like the games of my childhood, with those little toy soldiers and the toy guns; nobody was ever hurt then.

Christmas pudding decorated with skimmia rather th...

Clifton Mill in Clifton, Ohio is the site of this ...

Christmas "Santa" New York (LOC)

But this is reality.

Reality.

We thought the war would be over by Christmas, and it wasn't. We left happily and joyously to live in that stink-hole called a trench! What fools we were! We know the truth now, but we learnt the hard way. As we sit here our minds run frantically seeking refuge from the horrors of the war.

My nieghbour is from the same battalion as me. He stares at me with his eyes, his sad red infected eyes. His body is covered in blisters - painful ones... But not as painful as his memory. I hear him screaming when he sleeps, it worries me greatly. He's lucky that he didn't die but is it worse to live like this than live at all?

I wonder if I scream in the night. Visions have come to me in the...