Regardless of Cowardice
Sven walked out in his tattered medic’s uniform for the first time since returning to Germany. It hung off him as if it didn’t belong. I swallowed and hung my head, staring at the pale white hospital floors. Rubbing my hands at a quickening pace, I began to mumble. A memory stabbed my heart.
It was April 20th. I was still on the battlefield in Riems, France. I woke up to small raindrops hitting my face. Cold and hard, they punctured my body with a sensation of bullets.
The night before, as darkness had swept over the sky, the cold encircled me in its grip--as it had night after night. My eyes wandered, as my mind reexamined the day’s fight--the guns and screams, the blood and convulsing bodies. Less than an hour after I closed my eyes, the sun rose, and another night’s sleep had been thwarted.
I looked out our trench, and the sun was barely alive. I sunk back down into the hard dirt floor. A gun fired in the distance, my whole body tightened until I was no more than a young child, curled into a ball of fear.
Mechanically, we reached for our machine guns. It was our turn to move to the front trenches. As I took my position in the mud-filled cavern, I inhaled. My face became moist as the humidity, lurking with the remnants of blood, metal, and silt, soaked in. My hands clenched, shaking, as if I myself were the thunder roaring up above. I lost my breath. I began to heave uncontrollably. Death was surrounding me at every moment like a beat, constant and never ending. Death, death, death. Blood, blood, blood. Dieter, my mentor, noticed and gave me a glare as if to say, “Get it together.” I tried, but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, cry and let out emotions that had been lodged inside me, shoved down my throat and barred. Yet, “weakness leads to death,” as Dieter would so often say and thus, I tried to block out every emotion coming to me... to leave only one thought: strength equals survival.
As Sven came closer, his eyes wandered away from the memories stained in his jacket, all too aware of what he had done. The blood of his Russian patients consumed his every thought. At night he would replay the surgeries over and over. Whimpering, he would rub his hands as if to wash off the blood. Sven, being German like the rest of us, had decided to go to Russia to serve as a medic for the opposing forces. To sabotage the soldiers and weaken the army, he would amputate to extremes and purposefully create internal damages. His actions had come out of rage, and before he knew it, he was in too deep. Galina, his mother, had been killed in a Russian bombardment, thus Sven became crazed and wanted nothing more than revenge for his broken soul, so he began his journey--one for which the consequences would never end.
At the moment he entered with his jacket, I noticed the stained blood splattered across his torso. Something again snapped in me.
I felt my mind wander to the memories of my first bombardment.
The artillery was so close, it deafened me. I dropped to the bottom of the trench, my body hitting the wooden floor boards, my knees braced against my forehead. Shaking and rocking back and forth, I tried to erase the thoughts of death from my mind. A blood curdling scream erupted from the firing step above. It pierced the air, puncturing the walls of my mind. Looking up, a young soldier had fallen not ten feet from me and now lay in a puddle of blood. His leg was shredded and separated from his body. Closing my eyes, I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It seeped into my mouth, the warm salty flavor hitting my tongue. Thunder growled, sending shocks through my body. I was trapped; trapped by the now dead soldier, by the all-too-real fact that my life could end at any moment, and there was nothing I could do.
Sven sunk in his chair beside me. Silence wrapped us in its arms. My hands fidgeted. My nails dug into the palm of my hand as I squeezed them deeper and deeper. The white hospital walls came into view as I lifted my head. We sat in silence until the nurse came to get me. I hobbled into the eerie room, sitting on the table. The nurse began to examine the stump that was once my leg. I didn’t dare look. Tears welled in my eyes, and my muscles tensed. The nurse noticed my apprehension and began asking me questions about being home. She seemed to think it would help, but it made me think even more about what my life might have been had I not gone to war. Would I still be a free-spirited boy? I no doubt would still be a coward.
I recalled the pride my parents felt as I joined the army, but it had all come to an end as my weakness was discovered.
Staring at me with pride, tears welled in my mother’s eyes. I had never seen her look at me as fondly as at the moment I told her I was enlisting in the army. I too felt proud, knowing that for once I wasn’t a failure. My parents told me I would become a man, but I had yet to learn what that meant. I had heard great stories of war heroes. Somehow though, killing another man, now didn’t seem that heroic. Pulling my metal trigger and watching my bullet fly through the air, piercing a man, an innocent man, made my stomach drop. In truth, I felt it had been my only choice to join the army. My parents seemed to think that otherwise my life would wash away, and so I became a soldier.
I hobbled back down the hall, and I lay on my bed, trying to escape from the day’s traumatic events. I remembered all that had occurred in the last month. Seeing Dieter for the first time since being on the front line had struck me particularly hard.
Grenades flew across the the moonlit sky. We all ducked, hoping that doing so would save us from death. I looked around frantically, wondering where Dieter was. He had been outside the trench minutes before. Adrenaline kicked in, and I got to my feet, looking around for him. The second my head rose above the safety of the trench, a grenade hit the ground and exploded. Debris flew everywhere, and through the dust I could see Dieter. Metal hit his head, and he fell as if in slow motion. I tried to scream, but the terror I felt held me back. I wanted to run and save the one who believed in me, who taught me, but it was too late. A rock came and smashed into my head. I dropped and sunk to my knees. The last thing I thought before I was blacked-out was, “It should have been me that took that risk.”
I pulled my gun to my side. I looked around for the support of Dieter, but I remembered that he was gone. I couldn’t hold it together. I began to shake and mutter under my breath. The men nearby looked at me. I knew I would never be like them. I would never be able to desensitize myself. I knew I would always be that young man, scrawny and afraid of the unknown. Without Dieter there by my side, I felt a deep fear that I would be alone forever. The thought of death and loneliness was unbearable. I pulled myself together and trudged on, not looking back at the young boy who hung in the shadows.
I thought that was the last day I would ever see Dieter. But the room across from mine was his, and now I could see him sitting in his chair, drawing as usual. The journey from that horrific day to this one was very eventful and to me, unexpected. The day Dieter disappeared, I felt a deep pit in my stomach. I had lost the one who kept me sane, and as the month went on, my sanity dwindled. I was sure Dieter had died...but I was wrong.
I lay in the bed, staring at the stub that was all that remained of my leg. I felt a knot in my throat. I looked away. I watched as nurses came in and out. In all white, they ran around, frantically trying to get everyone what they needed. I lay there, wishing I could go back in time to before the war. I saw a man coming down the hallway. I lost my breath. Was I dreaming? It was Dieter! He seemed to be quite shaken. I didn’t know what to do. I lifted my hand in a small attempt to grab his attention. He made eye contact with me, cocking his head as if trying to remember where he had seen me. I started to yell. It must have been instinct. ‘Dieter, Dieter!’ He turned around, shocked.
He carefully sat down next to me. For minutes, he just stared at me. Finally he spoke, softly and unsure. “Is that you, Saelac?” he asked, grabbing my hand. His hand was cold and pale, but I felt a comfort I hadn’t felt in months. “Yes, it’s me,” I replied hesitantly, wondering how he was still alive. He let out a small whimper and pulled his hand from mine and placed it over his face. He sunk his head and shook it repeatedly. I put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, making him cry even harder. It took him nearly an hour to explain to me about his journey of betraying his country.
After being hit, he had suffered from amnesia. He recalled waking up to French men staring down on him. His uniform was in shreds, masking his true identity. So having no recollection of who he was, he assumed he was a French man and joined his enemy. He had served the rest of the battle fighting against his comrades. After his injury in May, he ended up at the same field hospital I went to initially after my injury.
Being an artist, he had made posters for our German army. However, after joining the French forces, he also made posters for them. During one of the battles, he found what looked exactly like the posters he had made for the French, but in German. Suddenly he realized something was not right. They looked too familiar. He remembered drawing those exact posters in our camp. It was then that he realized that I had been there with him as he drew his first poster. His identity as a French soldier began to unravel. He became overwhelmed by a whirlwind of emotions: sadness, shock and fear.
We weren’t that unlike after all; I was a coward, and he was a traitor.
I felt a sensation of hope thinking of Sven and Dieter. My dear comrade had returned, and I had a group of people who accepted me even in my cowardice. I was able to express myself without words. They understood the traumatic experiences I had suffered and didn’t have to ask.
Sven sat down, still in his uniform and finally told us about his Russian experiences and about how he had fled from the Russian Revolution. It had taken him years to do so and at last Sven was ready. It was eye opening to see all that he had gone through and see him realize the horror of his actions. We sat around playing cards for hours, often in total silence, allowing our minds to be distracted from the flood of emotions that swirled through us. Finally, we headed to our beds. The night was not as restless as the weeks before. I felt the warmth and comfort of the covers that were wrapped around me. I tried to keep my usual dreams of blood and death out of my head, but as usual it didn’t work.
The morning began with an eruption of noise above my bed. I opened my blurry eyes to see the faded face of Dieter. He shook me, and I jolted awake. He was speaking to me frantically. His expression sunk a little as I responded with confusion. He spoke again much clearer, but his voice was still shaking, his hand trembling. “Get up Saelac! It’s Sven.” I felt an instant panic. I got up, grabbing my crutches, I lifted myself off my bed as fast as possible. Dieter began running down the hall of the hospital to the roof. I saw Sven at the edge of the building through the small window of the door. I screeched; it couldn’t be. I ran faster than ever, trying to reach Sven before he did the unthinkable. We busted through the door leading to the roof of the ten-story building. But as my foot crossed the threshold, Sven let his feet slip off the concrete ledge. I reached out for him, but we both knew it was too late.
Sven was dead. I began to tremble, mumbling under my breath. How could this be? I saw something more horrific than anything I had ever experienced. Sven’s limp form was sprawled across a lone street in Strasbourg, his body seeping crimson blood. Somehow, though, I felt a strange sense of peace. As he fell, it looked as if the weight of the world was lifted off his shoulders. In a way, I was jealous of his bravery in ending something he knew was never going to change. His life would never again be anything other than one consumed in remorse and the heart-wrenching memories of his sins. The day wore on dull and eerie, but somehow a feeling of freedom escaped into the air.
The next day was full of hopelessness, but also yearning that our own lives would mean something; that we could move on from the experiences that had shaped our days into misery. Somehow though, it all seemed beyond our grasp.
The funeral was a mixture of sadness and realizations. Dieter and I stood above Sven’s wooden coffin staring at the small crowd of people in front of us. I looked down at the green grass beneath me as Dieter read the eulogy that would allow the world to see Sven as we did.
“Today we honor the hero that wasn’t a hero. This is meant in the most respectful way, as the man we gather here for saw past the thick facade that veils the truth of war. Sven Vogt started as a simple man, but he, like the rest, was swept up in the current of the battles and the petty triumphs. The trouble is, he went off the waterfall sooner than the rest of us, because he was so wise as to see that what we’ve done in the Great War is inescapable in this lifetime.
Sven would not have wanted us to lie to you. He would have wanted us to tell you the horrors of his actions. He was corrupted with vengeance and lost sight of who he truly was. All he wanted was forgiveness, but all he received was regret, consuming him all these years later. But for everything he had done, his eyes still held the same light as he persisted through the cards he had dealt himself. Regardless of his past, he was courageous for the decision he made to take his own life. He was a pioneer in profound self realization for our generation. To those he affected in Russia, he was a monster, but to those of us closer to home, with our own personal wartime struggles, Sven was a hero. But, really, what is the difference between a monster and a hero? The war changed us how it liked regardless.
But don’t mind a foolish soldier’s words. Make of Sven what you will. But I know that if he lived, he would stand beside us in our struggle against history. He would learn from his mistakes and love us like family, bearing his surgeon’s scalpel against the trials of tomorrow.”
I felt alone. Although I was surrounded by people who cared about me, I felt abandoned by one of the very few people who supported me. Sven had chosen to leave us. Why had he chosen this path? In a way, I wished I could be as brave, but I knew I had to fight through the pain of my traumatic experiences and move on with my life. Whether or not I would succeed, was a whole other matter, but I knew that it was my job to at least try to live my life to the fullest. Although I would be relieved when my life finally ended, I would be proud to have fought for my life until then. I wouldn’t give up and allow the war to win. I wouldn’t let it devour me. It seemed a lifetime ago when I allowed it to overtake me. Through the days with Dieter and Sven, I grew to realize I am stronger than I thought. Even though I felt completely alone, I no longer wanted to give up. I turned the other way and ran. Although I still felt scarred by my experiences in the Battle of Aisne, I now knew that I was going to make not only myself proud by living, but Sven. If I was called a coward, so be it, for I knew the truth. No man should ever have to experience something as traumatic as I did, and bravery cannot cover up the emotions and scars a soldier feels. I would rather be labeled a coward, than mask my true humanity
Sven walked out in his tattered medic’s uniform for the first time since returning to Germany. It hung off him as if it didn’t belong. I swallowed and hung my head, staring at the pale white hospital floors. Rubbing my hands at a quickening pace, I began to mumble. A memory stabbed my heart.
It was April 20th. I was still on the battlefield in Riems, France. I woke up to small raindrops hitting my face. Cold and hard, they punctured my body with a sensation of bullets.
The night before, as darkness had swept over the sky, the cold encircled me in its grip--as it had night after night. My eyes wandered, as my mind reexamined the day’s fight--the guns and screams, the blood and convulsing bodies. Less than an hour after I closed my eyes, the sun rose, and another night’s sleep had been thwarted.
I looked out our trench, and the sun was barely alive. I sunk back down into the hard dirt floor. A gun fired in the distance, my whole body tightened until I was no more than a young child, curled into a ball of fear.
Mechanically, we reached for our machine guns. It was our turn to move to the front trenches. As I took my position in the mud-filled cavern, I inhaled. My face became moist as the humidity, lurking with the remnants of blood, metal, and silt, soaked in. My hands clenched, shaking, as if I myself were the thunder roaring up above. I lost my breath. I began to heave uncontrollably. Death was surrounding me at every moment like a beat, constant and never ending. Death, death, death. Blood, blood, blood. Dieter, my mentor, noticed and gave me a glare as if to say, “Get it together.” I tried, but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, cry and let out emotions that had been lodged inside me, shoved down my throat and barred. Yet, “weakness leads to death,” as Dieter would so often say and thus, I tried to block out every emotion coming to me... to leave only one thought: strength equals survival.
As Sven came closer, his eyes wandered away from the memories stained in his jacket, all too aware of what he had done. The blood of his Russian patients consumed his every thought. At night he would replay the surgeries over and over. Whimpering, he would rub his hands as if to wash off the blood. Sven, being German like the rest of us, had decided to go to Russia to serve as a medic for the opposing forces. To sabotage the soldiers and weaken the army, he would amputate to extremes and purposefully create internal damages. His actions had come out of rage, and before he knew it, he was in too deep. Galina, his mother, had been killed in a Russian bombardment, thus Sven became crazed and wanted nothing more than revenge for his broken soul, so he began his journey--one for which the consequences would never end.
At the moment he entered with his jacket, I noticed the stained blood splattered across his torso. Something again snapped in me.
I felt my mind wander to the memories of my first bombardment.
The artillery was so close, it deafened me. I dropped to the bottom of the trench, my body hitting the wooden floor boards, my knees braced against my forehead. Shaking and rocking back and forth, I tried to erase the thoughts of death from my mind. A blood curdling scream erupted from the firing step above. It pierced the air, puncturing the walls of my mind. Looking up, a young soldier had fallen not ten feet from me and now lay in a puddle of blood. His leg was shredded and separated from his body. Closing my eyes, I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It seeped into my mouth, the warm salty flavor hitting my tongue. Thunder growled, sending shocks through my body. I was trapped; trapped by the now dead soldier, by the all-too-real fact that my life could end at any moment, and there was nothing I could do.
Sven sunk in his chair beside me. Silence wrapped us in its arms. My hands fidgeted. My nails dug into the palm of my hand as I squeezed them deeper and deeper. The white hospital walls came into view as I lifted my head. We sat in silence until the nurse came to get me. I hobbled into the eerie room, sitting on the table. The nurse began to examine the stump that was once my leg. I didn’t dare look. Tears welled in my eyes, and my muscles tensed. The nurse noticed my apprehension and began asking me questions about being home. She seemed to think it would help, but it made me think even more about what my life might have been had I not gone to war. Would I still be a free-spirited boy? I no doubt would still be a coward.
I recalled the pride my parents felt as I joined the army, but it had all come to an end as my weakness was discovered.
Staring at me with pride, tears welled in my mother’s eyes. I had never seen her look at me as fondly as at the moment I told her I was enlisting in the army. I too felt proud, knowing that for once I wasn’t a failure. My parents told me I would become a man, but I had yet to learn what that meant. I had heard great stories of war heroes. Somehow though, killing another man, now didn’t seem that heroic. Pulling my metal trigger and watching my bullet fly through the air, piercing a man, an innocent man, made my stomach drop. In truth, I felt it had been my only choice to join the army. My parents seemed to think that otherwise my life would wash away, and so I became a soldier.
I hobbled back down the hall, and I lay on my bed, trying to escape from the day’s traumatic events. I remembered all that had occurred in the last month. Seeing Dieter for the first time since being on the front line had struck me particularly hard.
Grenades flew across the the moonlit sky. We all ducked, hoping that doing so would save us from death. I looked around frantically, wondering where Dieter was. He had been outside the trench minutes before. Adrenaline kicked in, and I got to my feet, looking around for him. The second my head rose above the safety of the trench, a grenade hit the ground and exploded. Debris flew everywhere, and through the dust I could see Dieter. Metal hit his head, and he fell as if in slow motion. I tried to scream, but the terror I felt held me back. I wanted to run and save the one who believed in me, who taught me, but it was too late. A rock came and smashed into my head. I dropped and sunk to my knees. The last thing I thought before I was blacked-out was, “It should have been me that took that risk.”
I pulled my gun to my side. I looked around for the support of Dieter, but I remembered that he was gone. I couldn’t hold it together. I began to shake and mutter under my breath. The men nearby looked at me. I knew I would never be like them. I would never be able to desensitize myself. I knew I would always be that young man, scrawny and afraid of the unknown. Without Dieter there by my side, I felt a deep fear that I would be alone forever. The thought of death and loneliness was unbearable. I pulled myself together and trudged on, not looking back at the young boy who hung in the shadows.
I thought that was the last day I would ever see Dieter. But the room across from mine was his, and now I could see him sitting in his chair, drawing as usual. The journey from that horrific day to this one was very eventful and to me, unexpected. The day Dieter disappeared, I felt a deep pit in my stomach. I had lost the one who kept me sane, and as the month went on, my sanity dwindled. I was sure Dieter had died...but I was wrong.
I lay in the bed, staring at the stub that was all that remained of my leg. I felt a knot in my throat. I looked away. I watched as nurses came in and out. In all white, they ran around, frantically trying to get everyone what they needed. I lay there, wishing I could go back in time to before the war. I saw a man coming down the hallway. I lost my breath. Was I dreaming? It was Dieter! He seemed to be quite shaken. I didn’t know what to do. I lifted my hand in a small attempt to grab his attention. He made eye contact with me, cocking his head as if trying to remember where he had seen me. I started to yell. It must have been instinct. ‘Dieter, Dieter!’ He turned around, shocked.
He carefully sat down next to me. For minutes, he just stared at me. Finally he spoke, softly and unsure. “Is that you, Saelac?” he asked, grabbing my hand. His hand was cold and pale, but I felt a comfort I hadn’t felt in months. “Yes, it’s me,” I replied hesitantly, wondering how he was still alive. He let out a small whimper and pulled his hand from mine and placed it over his face. He sunk his head and shook it repeatedly. I put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, making him cry even harder. It took him nearly an hour to explain to me about his journey of betraying his country.
After being hit, he had suffered from amnesia. He recalled waking up to French men staring down on him. His uniform was in shreds, masking his true identity. So having no recollection of who he was, he assumed he was a French man and joined his enemy. He had served the rest of the battle fighting against his comrades. After his injury in May, he ended up at the same field hospital I went to initially after my injury.
Being an artist, he had made posters for our German army. However, after joining the French forces, he also made posters for them. During one of the battles, he found what looked exactly like the posters he had made for the French, but in German. Suddenly he realized something was not right. They looked too familiar. He remembered drawing those exact posters in our camp. It was then that he realized that I had been there with him as he drew his first poster. His identity as a French soldier began to unravel. He became overwhelmed by a whirlwind of emotions: sadness, shock and fear.
We weren’t that unlike after all; I was a coward, and he was a traitor.
I felt a sensation of hope thinking of Sven and Dieter. My dear comrade had returned, and I had a group of people who accepted me even in my cowardice. I was able to express myself without words. They understood the traumatic experiences I had suffered and didn’t have to ask.
Sven sat down, still in his uniform and finally told us about his Russian experiences and about how he had fled from the Russian Revolution. It had taken him years to do so and at last Sven was ready. It was eye opening to see all that he had gone through and see him realize the horror of his actions. We sat around playing cards for hours, often in total silence, allowing our minds to be distracted from the flood of emotions that swirled through us. Finally, we headed to our beds. The night was not as restless as the weeks before. I felt the warmth and comfort of the covers that were wrapped around me. I tried to keep my usual dreams of blood and death out of my head, but as usual it didn’t work.
The morning began with an eruption of noise above my bed. I opened my blurry eyes to see the faded face of Dieter. He shook me, and I jolted awake. He was speaking to me frantically. His expression sunk a little as I responded with confusion. He spoke again much clearer, but his voice was still shaking, his hand trembling. “Get up Saelac! It’s Sven.” I felt an instant panic. I got up, grabbing my crutches, I lifted myself off my bed as fast as possible. Dieter began running down the hall of the hospital to the roof. I saw Sven at the edge of the building through the small window of the door. I screeched; it couldn’t be. I ran faster than ever, trying to reach Sven before he did the unthinkable. We busted through the door leading to the roof of the ten-story building. But as my foot crossed the threshold, Sven let his feet slip off the concrete ledge. I reached out for him, but we both knew it was too late.
Sven was dead. I began to tremble, mumbling under my breath. How could this be? I saw something more horrific than anything I had ever experienced. Sven’s limp form was sprawled across a lone street in Strasbourg, his body seeping crimson blood. Somehow, though, I felt a strange sense of peace. As he fell, it looked as if the weight of the world was lifted off his shoulders. In a way, I was jealous of his bravery in ending something he knew was never going to change. His life would never again be anything other than one consumed in remorse and the heart-wrenching memories of his sins. The day wore on dull and eerie, but somehow a feeling of freedom escaped into the air.
The next day was full of hopelessness, but also yearning that our own lives would mean something; that we could move on from the experiences that had shaped our days into misery. Somehow though, it all seemed beyond our grasp.
The funeral was a mixture of sadness and realizations. Dieter and I stood above Sven’s wooden coffin staring at the small crowd of people in front of us. I looked down at the green grass beneath me as Dieter read the eulogy that would allow the world to see Sven as we did.
“Today we honor the hero that wasn’t a hero. This is meant in the most respectful way, as the man we gather here for saw past the thick facade that veils the truth of war. Sven Vogt started as a simple man, but he, like the rest, was swept up in the current of the battles and the petty triumphs. The trouble is, he went off the waterfall sooner than the rest of us, because he was so wise as to see that what we’ve done in the Great War is inescapable in this lifetime.
Sven would not have wanted us to lie to you. He would have wanted us to tell you the horrors of his actions. He was corrupted with vengeance and lost sight of who he truly was. All he wanted was forgiveness, but all he received was regret, consuming him all these years later. But for everything he had done, his eyes still held the same light as he persisted through the cards he had dealt himself. Regardless of his past, he was courageous for the decision he made to take his own life. He was a pioneer in profound self realization for our generation. To those he affected in Russia, he was a monster, but to those of us closer to home, with our own personal wartime struggles, Sven was a hero. But, really, what is the difference between a monster and a hero? The war changed us how it liked regardless.
But don’t mind a foolish soldier’s words. Make of Sven what you will. But I know that if he lived, he would stand beside us in our struggle against history. He would learn from his mistakes and love us like family, bearing his surgeon’s scalpel against the trials of tomorrow.”
I felt alone. Although I was surrounded by people who cared about me, I felt abandoned by one of the very few people who supported me. Sven had chosen to leave us. Why had he chosen this path? In a way, I wished I could be as brave, but I knew I had to fight through the pain of my traumatic experiences and move on with my life. Whether or not I would succeed, was a whole other matter, but I knew that it was my job to at least try to live my life to the fullest. Although I would be relieved when my life finally ended, I would be proud to have fought for my life until then. I wouldn’t give up and allow the war to win. I wouldn’t let it devour me. It seemed a lifetime ago when I allowed it to overtake me. Through the days with Dieter and Sven, I grew to realize I am stronger than I thought. Even though I felt completely alone, I no longer wanted to give up. I turned the other way and ran. Although I still felt scarred by my experiences in the Battle of Aisne, I now knew that I was going to make not only myself proud by living, but Sven. If I was called a coward, so be it, for I knew the truth. No man should ever have to experience something as traumatic as I did, and bravery cannot cover up the emotions and scars a soldier feels. I would rather be labeled a coward, than mask my true humanity