Winfred

i

Freidrich Von Steubon, Captain, SS

How does one survive war?

I have asked myself this question every day...it has become habit to question this idea.

I wake up, I dress. I wear the clothes of an officer, and a high-ranking one at that. I put on my medals...polish the brass buttons on my coat...straighten my collar...I used to take pride in this ritual. Every part of it exuded power. The black SS uniform...the shininess and stiffness of it all...I felt pride.

I used to feel that I had something to believe in. Something to fight for. I told myself I was damaged, and that I had a wrong to make right. I did not even know my parents, and yet I held this grudge against the British soldiers, for dropping the bombs that killed them. Was it all for naught? I used to feel angry with the pilots of those planes, men I did not even know. And yet were they not all doing the same thing I was doing now? Were they not just fighting for their country, trying to protect the ones they loved, and the things they believed in?

I used to feel lonely, when I first joined Hitler's military. No matter the anger I held inside, and the diligence in my work which that emotion inspired, I still found that, on occasion, I missed the times when things were simpler. Times when Maddalyn and I still spoke to one another, when she was not angry with me for all the anger I was holding inside, and everything she thought I was doing wrong by joining the army. Of course, I pushed those emotions aside, because that is weakness, and weakness has no place in Hitler's army. But at least it was something.

Now...I feel nothing.

I remember the first day I awakened and realized that something was missing...that I'd lost a part of myself. It was a Friday. I woke up and dressed as normal, and then was present for an execution at high noon. The commander of the prison, a senior officer, terminated the first three prisoners, and then he turned to me. He handed me the gun, as if it were a privilege, or some sort of honor. I had been party to such things before. I had tortured, and beaten prisoners, and withheld food from starving men. But I had never been the hand that chose whether or not to inflict death.

I took the gun; I looked up. The man was blindfolded. I did not blink, nor did I falter. I raised the gun, and shot. It was clean, and quick, and the man fell forward, dead.

And I felt nothing.

That was when I realized...when I learned...how you survive a war. You harden yourself. You push everything away, until you feel nothing, and you are merely a shell, or a robot...until you are completely dehumanized. Only then can you look down the barrel of a rifle, and point it at a man's head, and pull the trigger, without feeling a small niggling of guilt in the deepest corners of your mind. Only then can you do what you need to in order to survive. The consequences of failure are high, and I cannot fail.

So I have pushed it all away. I have blocked it all off. I am hard.

I am a soldier.