Look for

If someone were to ask me right now if I'm afraid, I honestly wouldn't know how to answer, but the answer that would instinctively come to my lips would be no. We left our homes, we all came here by force, but many of us delude ourselves into believing we really wanted to come.

The hail of bullets that greets us is so intense that we haven't even disembarked yet, and we already have casualties. A timid Irishman near my position, holding a rosary by his gun, was struck in the chin by a bullet, shattering his entire jaw and exiting through the back of his neck. I watched him roll over the side with his eyes wide open, joining the premature wave of bodies that had already formed. Now it's not just the indigo that surrounds us, it's also the crimson red.

I advance alongside my comrades; I watch their backs, they watch mine; Memories pile up in my mind: my girlfriend, our last goodbye at a dusty station, with a missed kiss through the window, the lawn of my mother's house... Is it true that all of us, that our entire lives are reduced to just a moment? What do we live for in that instant? If so, I don't want to think that it was only for this that I was always saving myself.

Our commander has just given the signal; we walk on leaden feet; the stench, mix of blood, gunpowder and vomits grows ever more distinct, ever more evident; apart from dizzy I feel heavy with all my gear. My heart is pounding in my mouth, but as we leave here, I'm sure they'll say I never felt any anguish. My comrade, Salinger, is vomiting; I'm holding him by the arm and waist. They told us to focus solely on moving forward, that actions like this made us both easy targets—nonsense! They want to take away even our right to decide why or for whom we live, why or for whom we bid farewell.

Who gave these petty tyrants, wherever they come from, the right to pit us against one another? How long will we remain captive to their desires, to every word they utter, and even more so to the ones they keep silent? How long will we continue to make our destinies depend on their whims and their excesses? No matter how much we exalt ourselves above one another, we're all equal in the Grim Reaper. The problem is that only we can prove it. The medals are for them, the dust is for us.

When the destinies of two human beings intertwine through a firearm, who among us wouldn't want to be the one on the butt end of the rifle? There, amidst the waves, that red tide, Salinger wasn't so fortunate: even in my arms, my companion finally realized that life was red and was escaping him in torrents at that moment...

From the diary of Private Henry Donovan

June 6, 1944

Shores of Normandy