"I was expecting that question. First, as I have mentioned before,
every one of us will get our house, our food, and all of life's
necessities absolutely free; second, we will copy the system of the
Martians. We will have ten lower degrees and ten higher ones. The
higher ones we will call rank degrees. There will be ten points between
one degree and another and we will be gradually and honorably promoted
or demoted by points the same as we were in the army. Those who have
made a discovery, an invention or a needful improvement and those who
have done meritorious service will receive for life a better, larger,
and more comfortable home in the suburbs outside the city, with certain
luxuries such as a better and larger plane and luxurious pleasure
automobiles. They will have the services of attendants in their homes;
first production and best quality of all our necessities, and many
other compensations and honors that our authorities will decree. On the
other hand, we will demote and punish any one who, through malicious
intent, will not obey our laws and regulations or will not comport
himself honorably according to our rules.
"We and many others of our returned soldiers and sailors who have just
served and fought in the bloodiest of world battles, and we, with
our buddies, who sacrificed themselves on the battlefields, were the
instruments in this most atrocious war. The victims of inhuman hellish,
cruel warfare, we experienced and endured the ordeals of the greatest
sufferings that human flesh and fortitude can stand in battles.
"We fought on the blood-soaked decks and gun-turreted floors of
battleships, in the fuselage, cockpit, bellies, and wings of flying
fortresses, inside hot, cramped, fire-and-cannon belching tanks, in the
putrified trenches and shell and fox holes of battle scarred beaches,
on the sides of most inaccessible steep mountain precipices, and on
deserts and in jungles where we lay day and night in putrid mud, water,
and scum. We faced blinding, blazing sun, terrific heat, torrential
rains, and body-freezing snow blizzards. We suffered from frost bites,
lack of sleep, hunger, and thirst, surrounded by dirt and bitten by
insects, vermin, and reptiles during the agonies of our painful wounds.
We constantly heard the anguishing, pleading and moaning of men
lying wounded on No Man's Land. Before our very eyes, our buddies and
brothers and best friends were shot and torn asunder. Others had their
eyes gouged out and hanging over their cheeks. Many of our paratroopers
were used as clay pigeons and by mistake shot down by our own soldiers.
At any moment we were expecting to meet their fate. Many of our buddies
were destroyed like a puff of smoke, whose only remains and memories
are the star medals worn by their mothers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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