Oh God, it is all my fault. I am not locked up here because I wanted peace but because of all those who died because of me. Why was I chosen as the squad leader? Once in a while, when I am laboring, I remember a joke or a word of comfort Marcus used to say; I wish he was still here. He is not; his body is rotting in France somewhere and being chewed up by rats. I led my squad to charge through that storm of death, and Matthew, Raphael, and Carl never walked out of that storm. Why am I alive? I did not serve the United States properly; I failed the United States. God, forgive me; please forgive me. How can I ever atone for the remains left defiled behind in the trenches?

I had a nightmare last night, and the night before the last, and the night before the night before last night. Raphael twisted his head with a hole in it towards me and stared and just kept staring, not saying anything - similar to Matthew the few days before he died. His body distorted as he melted into the slime and plash. I had to walk through that mud. Do I still remember Marcus's face? He died much earlier on during the war, left by the merciless charge of the tank. What happened to his body? Where is he?

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When it rained last week, I dreamt of boundless mud and claustrophobic penitentiary-trenches, with bullets that will stab me like spears the moment my head is an inch over the dirt too low to provide any real cover, and each corner contains the possibility of a lurking bayonet. I found myself shaking, waiting for another artillery to rip open the buildings and people and dreams. That shrieking rain never came. I have never seen this long without it raining fire and destruction. Did that hell ever end? When did that hell begin? Maybe it began way before 1914.