He is half a man really,

Less if you count his soul,

Marked with the bloody fingerprints,

Of the men he shot in his muddy hole.

And when he goes off strolling,

In lulls of this the great war,

He'll feel the wind that's blowing,

Bring back the machine guns roar.

He'll feel the blow of a crowbar,

On his already plated knee,

The wound on his shoulder,

He'll grasp in agony.

The fight has already left him,

From bed he can barely rise,

Wishing for death would be weak,

But he begs, one shot between the eyes.

Something to end this pain,

He knows will outlive the war,

Haunting him forever,

If he ever gets that far.

Then one day he's in the trenches,

He hears the call above,

His regiment is to move forward,

And on slips his gloves.

A suicidal order,

Is this what he wants,

He feels the natural panic,

But he wears a calming stance.

He calls 'Today is the day I die',

Says that he is an already empty man,

He's hit soon by the metal debris,

The first step onto the No Man's Land.

The shouts and screams as the shell explodes,

The past wounds now forgotten,

As his stomach is torn open and leaking,

As his men search for the man who shot him.

What a lot of shrapnel,

Falls from an empty shell,

The body of a broken man,

His blood could fill a well.

Some minutes pass, he's on his own,

He's sure he has been left,

And then come men a-running,

For the soldier bleeding to death.

He looks up at his comrades,

And sees his terms of pain,

In no less than a dozen eyes,

And understanding fell like rain.

He closes his eyes without fear,

The sergeant pulls out a magnum,

The fire is shot just once dead on,

The bullet that was shot at him.

And he finally got what he wanted,

Though he'll never see another sunrise,

He no longer begs for,

That one shot between the eyes.