The mud saturated our uniforms, seeping down to our bones, marinating us with the flavors of rancid roots, acid rain, and decaying flesh. There was no escaping it. We spent days marching, winding our way through every inch of the country, through abandoned towns and desolate fields and woods. Time would pass into a strange prism of vague impressions: gangrene green, frostbitten blue, all fading into a bruised black. And then when we had been degraded to nothing more than lumps of walking muscle, the earth exploded into bits of bloody bodies flying through the fires of “freedom.” Trees trembled and shook under the pressure of our passion. Delicate violets wilted in the vapid violation. Hundred-year-old moss drowned in our blood. So while our brothers sat in classrooms learning biology, we learned anatomy in the field. We took in the beauty of the muscular system as the fire from our artillery peeled back the skin of our friends and enemies. We located the ascending aorta, the thorax, the left and right coronary arteries, the subclavian and the brain, and blew them to fucking bits. Our skin seared in the blaze of grenades, and the smell of roasting meat and burning charcoal blanketed the field. Our tears left salty trails down our cheeks as bullets peppered our bodies. And in the morning, the bits and pieces of us got washed down the drain connected to the city sewage lines and septic tanks, where we’ll be puréed and purified and eventually liquified, gulped up in glasses of water by millions of thirsty souls. And the leftovers that are worth saving are swept onto white gurneys like white platters and wheeled away to be re-stuffed, re-stitched, re-seasoned and returned home. Back to the farms, the factories, the lumberyards, and the coal mines. Back to the broken homes, the empty plates, and the mourning mothers. And with our amputated legs and prosthetic arms, we’ll do the best we can to bury all the horror, and “march on.”