three day road response #3

Before he leaves a corpse, Elijah tells me he has taken to opening each man's eyes 

and staring into them... knowing that he, Elijah, is the last thing 

that each will see before being placed into the cold mud and water here. 

Before they go to their place.

Elijah, he says the spark fills his belly when it gnaws for food.

Whenever you read true accounts of what World War I was like, the majority of them are sad and horrifying. The soldiers tell us about the lice, rats, water, trenchfoot, and No Man's Land. They tell us how awful it was; the propaganda for the war was so great that it was hard to know what the war would really be like. The soldiers were convinced they would be great heroes who were praised for their actions, that the war would be over within the blink of an eye.

But they were wrong.

We know now how horrifying the war truly was, and the suffering each of the soldiers went through. But then there's Elijah -- he's an interesting character. He makes the war seem to be fun. The way he acts around his fellow soldiers, the way he boasts about his kills, the way he so readily throws himself into raids. It seems as though he loves the war, even with all the dirty parts of it. He laughs with the other soldiers, and when the French tell him to scalp his enemies so he has proof of his kills, he does it. Strangely enough, it's as though he's losing who he really is while Xavier is retreating even more into himself by contrast.

On the other hand, it's clear to see that Xavier hates everything about the war. He almost seems to be jealous that Elijah is having the time of his life, but I think one of the only reasons Elijah is no immune to the hardships of the war is because he's becoming increasingly addicted to morphine. I wonder now if the same thing will happen to Xavier. I wonder if he will resist it for as long as he can because he will have already known what could happen to him through morphine -- because it already happened to Elijah.