Huddled with anticipation of pain and loss, the brave and fearful alike band together awaiting the unwelcome moment. Courage is a scarce thing among the trenches as one by one men crouch to move forward. Across a barren landscape, that is more like the backyard of the grim reaper, they jump out of their holes like frightened rabbits dashing forward into the smoke and chaos. Shouting and wailing can be heard as bullets move by making no sound until they strike something. Valiant though their efforts are, the soldiers are little more than fodder for a cannon that is not pointed at those who started the unreasonable slaughter, but at the common man who was content to work at a trade until rousted from his warm abode and cast into the mud and blood next to his comrades. Now as the smoke settles, men who have long forgotten how to tie their own shoes heave their large masses on to  a table as the groan about the horrors of war, all the while indulging in worldly pleasure as the common fall spilling blood for nothing that affords them any good will. The ones who make the bullets prosper and the politicians speak of how great the sacrifice was, of the common man, while their dogged forms rest safely behind walls of stone and steel many miles away from the harm, an their offspring are not picked to wield the sword or take the harm as these men test out their new machines of war. So onward goes the common soldier, into the fray and the slaughter. Fighting for someone else's ideals, while they give little in the way of thought to his sacrifice, except when it suits their nefarious purposes or is expedient to keep those who remain content that the loss of their love ones were not in vain.