SECONDS BEFORE A SOLDIER DIES

We cannot know a soldier's last thought after the fatal shot has been fired, to what heights he aspired, what really mattered moments before his life was shattered and his blood was splattered on this foreign ground, his fright as the angel of death, bathed in holy light. appeared in the night of his demise and ascendancy into the skies where God awaited patiently to set him free of earthly pain and misery.

We can not know who he will leave to grieve his passing from this world to the next, what his soul will expect, what complexities will cause a confrontation with his life of memories.

We cannot know. So much will die with this GI who rises to the holy sky with just one unanswered question: Why?

And as his name is deleted from the list of the living waiting to be defeated others still must face the wrath and walk the path the dead once tread and ask themselves as bullets fly ''Will I be the next to die?"