Of Soldiers, Six

Several of the best human hypocrisies are immortalized in catechisms. We say "violence never solved anything" when history repeatedly teaches us otherwise, and once we prematurely labeled an entire, global war as "The War to End All Wars" long before we recorded its half-formed outcome. Dynasties fall. Empires rise. In marble, granite and concrete, we immortalize these events, large and small, and we celebrate the human beings named heroes there. Rightly so. Pause a moment before The Wall – let your finger trace names in stone. From pits of despair and summits of glory, they report. Of the second war to end all wars and of its exhausted sire, empires' executioner; of a fateful battle fought among history's cruel, azure skies over vast seas named for peace; of one hateful corporal born to innocence yet destined to depravity; and of youth in war confronting the horror of slaughter in the name of sovereign vanity; such twisted threads weave life's strange tapestry. Of warfare's cold compassion, here find merest details, and of soldiers, six.