2. DNA: WHAT DOES THIS SUGGEST? Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin / They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives. Siegfried Sassoon

3. READ: WHAT DO YOU THINK? Base Details Siegfried Sassoon- Base Details If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I’d live with scarlet majors at the Base. And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You’d see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel. Reading the Roll of Honor. “Poor young chap,” I’d say—“I used to know his father well; Yes we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap” And when the war is done and youth stone dead; I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

4. A SOLDIERS MONOLOGUE BOOM! The deafening sound of explosions still echo around my skull. I served three years in Afghanistan. They made it sound so exciting in recruitment, “Serving one’s country”. I always wanted to be a hero. I was nothing before I enlisted, and now, even after my discharge, I’m still nothing. A worthless piece of shrapnel, blighting society. It was the roadside bomb that changed me. There we were, driving along one of Afghanistan’s endless lonely roads, if you could even call them roads, just tracks in the sand really, here today, gone tomorrow, a bit like me. The bomb, it was meant for us, the “enemy” troops; but instead it claimed the lives of the innocent. A family of five, seeking refuge, were it’s victims. How where they to know? They were dead before their car had even hit the ground, they didn’t stand a chance. At least they didn’ suffer. Can you imagine what that does to a man?

5. Afghanistan. It used to be my reality, but now it is my worst nightmare. I’m a reject. Everybody who I was ever close to, gone. I lash out, I never mean to hurt them. I can’t control myself any more. They mess with my head, it’s like they’re inside me, dictating my every action. They don’t understand, they don’t know what I saw out there. They never had to watch young men and women gunned down in the streets, their lives only really just beginning. They never had to watch their best friend slowly gasping for his final breath in a roadside ditch. They will never understand my pain. Torture, that’s all my life seems to be any more. Here I am, back home, away from the bloodshed, the death and the fear. I’m not though really. The flashbacks, they still haunt me, I can still hear the terrified screams whenever I close my eyes. I’m supposedly safe here, but still I’m not. I’m isolated, I’m a freak, Nobody wants to be near me. Fear. It’s in their eyes, though they try to mask it with shallow smiles, I’ve hurt so many of them, but it’s their fault really, that’s what I keep telling myself. It’s like they intentionally try to infuriate me, to invade my conscience.

6. The doctors, they say I’m ill, shell-shock or post traumatic stress disorder. Maybe they are right, what am I to know Does it matter though, really? They can’t cure me. I’m cursed to forever be haunted by the twisted images of terror-stricken people, explosions and the gaunt faces of the dead. I should never have enlisted, why was I so stupid. So many lives lost, so many ruined, including my own. I can try and blame who ever I want but ultimately I know deep down inside that it was my own decision, and my fault. Everyday I contemplate ending it all. Today, is the day I finally think I will do it. I went for a walk earlier, I sat on a bench and I watched. I watched the nameless, faceless people walk past, and I thought, what if our time on this is earth is the pointless part, maybe death is our only way out and the only thing we can look forward too. Is anybody truly happy. But then, in my mind, the smiling face of those whose lives I saved out in Afghanistan, those to whom I gave a second chance. I’m confused, I don’t know where to go from here, in reality I’m a worthless shell of a human. BOOM! The explosions, they fill my head again, they will never go away. I’ve decided. I reach for the comfort of the trigger… About these ads