February 23, 1918

Why wont you just let me be. Let me forget. I try to ignore the facts and make myself I better person. I go to church. I repent, what must I do to make the ghosts go away. To make you go away. You know it wasn't personal. Or does that make it worse. Of course its personal and its all my fault, I killed you and you and you. So many dead by my hand, my gun. I hope this is helping you, I hope after this you move on.
The first man I killed. I didn't kill him. He was dead long before we ever crossed paths. In war you lose everything but first to go is any innocence you have left. It leaves as fast as possible and there is nothing you can do to hold onto it. You don't even have to kill a man to lose that precious protection. Just to see a man killed is enough in some conditions. This man I'm talking of, it was in his eyes, that's where he was dead. And when the life in your eyes dies it doesn't matter anymore if your mortal self goes on breathing. He was a machine. He worked like a perfect soldier and it was obvious at how experienced he was at this thing called war. So he jumped in to our trench. Duck stab, stab, punch, duck, duck, duck. That's how he worked. And he came towards me, my first time in battle. He could see it in me .his dull expressionless eyes surveyed me. He considered. He was going to kill me and save me. He would rescue me from the loss of innocence that had hurt him so bad. That had killed him. For an instant his eyes were revived. He charged. I did not see this thought in his eyes. All I saw was a dirty German man running at me with a gun in his hand. He kept looking into my eyes with that same stare. Nowhere else but my eyes. About two feet from me he jerked to a halt. I was splattered with blood. That's what woke me from my stupor. I looked at him, all of him. The sword on the end of my gun had surged into this man. He looked at me one last time. I was so miserable to be the last thing he saw in this world. It was then that I noticed the look in his eyes. I interpreted it. I couldn't believe he was smiling at his own death. He was smiling. The first man I ever killed had been dead years before that day. It still doesn't change the fact that he died because of me. I know god will never forgive me for that day. But that man does. He will not haunt me. He doesn't bother to even think of me. He is somewhere else at this time. But not here, because I killed him.