So you want to know about war:
I'll tell you about war it isn't for heroes its for a bunch of scared kids that are so scared in battle that they do things they'd never think about. War is 99.9% boredom and .1% pure terror. Not only that - it stinks. It stinks on the battlefield, it stinks every time you fire your piece, it stinks of the dead, it stinks whenever you fire an artillery piece, it stinks whenever Shell goes off. You get a stink from burned flesh that has such a powerful cloying smell that once you have smelled it, that you will never forget it. Your buddies tank and even you stink. You smell unwashed bodies of both your enemies and your friends and your self. You smell the rice paddies that are all around you. You spell death and dying and decay every moment of the day and night. There is just no getting away from a horrible smells that surround you. They say that if you are in battle long enough you will no longer smell the stench around you. This is a true, no matter how long you've been in battle or how we used to it you think you are you will never escape the stench of war.
It doesn't matter where you are; whether you are in a foxhole, in the trench, in a truck, in the tank there is no way to escape the stench of war. You may even be flying in an airplane high over an enemy city and you can still smell the stench of burning bodies below.
You may be sitting in a bunker looking out over a machine gun waiting for your enemy to appear. Even the inside of a bunker as tanks because it was dug in a rice paddy. The spell even permeates the many layers of sandbags that your bunker is made up of. When you fire your machine gun the stink of bullets going off adds to the overall stench of the bunker. In the bunker you can smell the fear of its other occupants you can even smell the fear of the enemy as they advance towards you.
The only relief you ever get from this smell is when you go behind the front lines to take a bath or a shower. Sometimes it is months between the showers and when you take off your uniform it is so dirty that is no longer recognizable. You prop it up in the corner, and while you are showering someone takes it away and leaves you a clean one to take its place. Even as you put this uniform on you'd know the next time you get a chance to take a shower this uniform is going to be just as dirty as the one you just left behind you.
All wars come to an end and at last you are away from the eternal stink of war.
