Those longs hours clocked playing Call of Duty could have never prepared me for this. The M16 rounds had just finished firing; the rhythmic rata-tat-tat roar of deafening machinegun gunfire still echoing like a resonating quake in the back of my mind. My hands trembled in astonishment and nauseating. Before I had summoned the strength to even squeeze the trigger, my comrades had done the deed. A smoke out post-apocalyptic village on the outskirts of the middle-eastern border. Its population was already living in poverty and famine. For what reason did we mow down these defenseless ailing people? Humans not unlike you or I: women, children, even infants laid out in the ruin of our conquest. And for what?

Because our 'sarge told us to.

All around me my brethren roared with laughter and pride. I didn't even want to consider myself in the same league as any of those bloodthirsty, rampageous gluttons (although our matching camouflaged attire said otherwise). One of them even had the audacity, the sheer gall to pat me on the back! I dropped my rifle furiously to the ground, sending a discharged shot to ring out into the bedrock in the clouded distance. Everyone's attention turned to me, murmurs building up in the crowd:

'What's that recruit doing?'
'That pansy can't take the heat!'
'Sarge, you shoulda' left this wimp back at the base.'

The sweltering desert sun blotted out the entire horizon, melding the entire stretch into one golden mammoth bloodsoaked blur. A moan came from the wreckage of a building we had hit during out initial raid with a C4 charge. Trapped underneath a pile of debris was a squirming survivor who was writhing with his legs incased underneath the fallen rock of the building.

'Leave him to croak', our 'sarge said as he kicked up a cloud of dirt into the survivors face.

That was it, I had it. My eyes, diluted by the deceitful propaganda of fairytale war stories and glorified promises were now cleared by the visions in front of me, bringing me to see what it really all amounted to. Bloodshed, senseless ruination and destruction, the mutilation of innocence and annihilation of humanity. The birth of apocalypse and holocaust.

I reared my arm back and swung with gusto at my 'sarge with a devastating sucker-punch. Everyone's guns trained on me immediately. I was done with war, and war was done with me. I wasn't made for this carnivorous regime.

'What the hell has gotten into you cadet? You need to wake up!'

'On the contrary, 'sarge'I have.'