Toy Soldiers

We are men of the army.
What does that even really mean?
It's as if being conscripted into the army
isn't enough.
Putting our lives on hold for two years
isn't enough.
Risking our lives to protect the ones we love
isn't enough.

No.

We are men of the army.
Extraordinary beings who may wobble but should never fall.

To Seek. To Save. To Serve.
The core values I was taught to live by, without question.
My role in the army was simple, seek knowledge to save lives and serve my fellow soldiers with compassion.

I remember sitting still in the dead of night, all alone.
The siren blares and off I go into the unknown.

In the distance, a stream of light slices through the darkness.

The closer I get, the clearer the picture emerge as it comes into frame.
A fellow soldier is sat down, clutching his rifle close to his body, looking down in shame.

His commander, a man who is supposed to lead by example, stands beside him, the look of disdain clear as day.

The sprained ankle looked pretty bad, I begin to act as I have in history.
Evacuate the casualty and assess the injury.

Placing an ice pack onto the swollen feet, his commander hovers over me like a vulture
How long is this going to take?
I refrain from saying anything vulgar
I explain calmly that the casualty can't go on any longer.

Just wrap and go.
He's a man of the army, a little sprain is nothing much to care about.
Just wrap and go.
Back in my day, medical attention was only given to those who blacked out.

Just wrap and go?

What has the world come to, when we are expected to somehow have a healing factor, that causes the pain to go away in a blink of an eye.
Where we are nothing more than toy soldiers, once broken, there's nothing a little tape wrapped around couldn't rectify.

When logic is thrown out of the window, in favour of the social norm of man equals strong, strong equals having the balls to never give up no matter what, in whatever you're pursuing.
After all, we preach that "Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing".

We are men of the army.

Yes.

We are also made up of flesh and bones.
We may have the willpower to ignore the pain and groans.

Yet, we can't avoid the fact that broken things becomes unwanted, when left unattended.

We are men of the army and we are only human.