There was a time when everything I did made sense.

When I try to remember, I come across a washed out picture of what it was like to be free. No details or anything, just this sensation, this feeling that life would go on, that things had a place.

It never lasts. The feeling always fade away. Blue skies turn grey, and the sound of that little girl’s laughter that used to make me smile disappears against the backdrops of yells and explosions.

I look down into our muddy grave, wet and cold. Pierre is reading from the good book across from me. The pages are seeped in water, the ink for the most part gone.

My hand reaches in my jacket. I fumble through the heavy layers until I find it. The note she wrote. I don’t take it out. I’ve read it enough times to know every word, every ink drop, every curve of her handwriting.

I grip my rifle, and get ready to go over the top.

No man’s land, they’ll come to call it.

By the time we set foot on it, we had long stopped being men.

Ypres, 1917