Would you rather be a bush?

This picture, although somewhat empty compared to the vastness of wartime, epitomizes the reality of war and its effects on man. The stark contrast between intense fighting and the capturing of a prisoner is portrayed by the empty terrain behind the men. If you were in the prisoner's position, would you have rather been an ant which lives its life through work for the common good of the colony even if individually he is nothing but a pawn? Have you might as well been born a bush which grows peacefully on a hill with nothing to do but take in sunlight and convert it to energy? Everything this man has lived for, his family, his job, his self, it is all gone. Those humanistic things are no longer his because he is not any more human than he is a bush. At least as a bush he would be free. Here he is in the middle of a war, no where near combat but still so close to death and inanimation. Suppose how the fighters on the front line would feel, they would want nothing more than to be in his situation, out of the way of constant attacks and bombardments.

These two fighters, looking each other in the eye, must have had such raw emotions flow through them. To be owned by another person is one thing, but to be their prisoner, as well as an enemy, what is that? Do you suppose either of these men have laid awake at night and wondered how they came to be in the profession of murder, and for what reasons they think it is right? Or would the fear of realizing that what they are doing is wrong keep them from letting their mind ask questions like that? Do you envy the person who captured you or are you glad that you didn't have to do the same to someone like yourself? All these questions are questions that have to be asked because of war. These are not light questions that you should be able to answer easily. These are questions people have been forced to ask themselves because of the degradation that coincides with war.