War is so romantic,
Don't you think?
The women swooning for the strong men,
The uniforms and stubborn stances.
Their confidence in the rightness of their ways,
Turns the hearts of ladies soft.
The young eyes and naïveté of those lily white boy soldiers who believe in their invincibility,
Is so appealing to the women on the sidelines

The day dreams of nursing the men back to health,
And having one fall deep, deep in love with you.
Their nurse, caretaker as you have become
Appeals to that hopeless romantic..

But what happens when they return?
The innocence gone,
A haunted look in the beautiful broken eyes.
When their bodies are shaken-
And their minds aren't quite right.
Who has the strength to cradle their fragile forms,
And stand there beside them in the night?
To hush them when they cry at the horrors they have seen.

So many hundreds of thousands of wars;
Where the boys come back as shattered men,
Where they come back without their friends
And they can't quite cope with their new reality.

Yes there is romanticism in war,
But when does it stop being a novel
And start identifying as a horror story?