Dalton Trumbo “Johnny got his gun”

War. The word too many times said: too many times shouted – it started to feel dull, tongue-numbing, tasteless.

Now, the words that surround it give it the real flavour. The Great War. The Holy War. The World War. The War of the Worlds. The imagery. The horror. The pride. Defeat and victory.

This book will give this word an exquisite taste not know before. A new feeling. Claustrophobia. Being trapped in your own body. Suffocating. With remnants of “the life that could be” buried alive with you, playing in your head a dull tune, over and over again. Over and over again, scorching the little that is left of your sanity.

But this is not what will not be the final blow. For it would never be the meaning that “would have been” to deliver the final blow; it would be the meaning that never even existed. Never existed for a man with no legs, no arms, no mouth and no face; nothing but one wish.

Which is against the regulations. T-H-E regulations, somebody just shoot me.

Both the wish and having one.

P.S. When I closed the book, one line echoed in my head spoken by a Motorised Patriot from Bioshock Infinite: “Too rare is the man who takes a stand, for God and sweetest Fatherland. But here’s the place we revere the heroes of our city dear.“