On a December morning about two weeks before Christmas, mu Uncle Steve went to the closet and got out his 30.06 hunting rifle, say down in his chair, put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe.
He left behind an ugly mess of brains and blood on the wall behind him.
He also left behind a wife and six kids.
Uncle Steve had been shot through the jaw on d-day in Normandy. It took away a good bit of his jawbone ans some of his tongue. The managed to reconstruct his jawbone and give him dentures for his mossing teeth, but he was never a complete person afterwards.
Afterwards he was never the same. He dragged his wife and kids all over the west coast of the U.S., never settled in one place for long. More than his jawbone was shattered on that June morning.
So this is dedicated to the forgotten casuaties of war. The ones who gave their lives for their country, maybe not on the battlefield, but nonetheless because of it.
Here's to the broken men that come back from war, but never return home, who struggle with their experiences and never quite heal. To those who, in the stillness of the night contemplate the cold round circle, the blue barrel or the bottle of pills.
They died for your freedom just as surely as if they had died on the battlefield.
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