When The War ended, we came home to the Peace we purchased with our lives. In many places, people happy to have their sons and daughters back welcomed us with open arms. In other areas, jeers, flying eggs, fruit, and worse met us. In twenty years of unrelenting War, many people forgot what we fought for. We were the taxes they didn’t want to pay, the monsters who killed for a living. We were dangerous. It was a difficult homecoming.
World War I’s Eastern Front was one of the largest military campaigns by area ever fought on Earth. Stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas, Russia faced Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottomans in three unrelenting years of total war that claimed sixteen million casualties. In the end, the Russian Empire collapsed and Vladimir Lenin built the Soviet Union out of the ashes of revolution. And so ended Russia’s involvement in The War.
I’m a rather outgoing person. I could party all day long and never get tired. Being with people energizes me, gives me a rush like no drug ever created. I guess that makes people my drug of choice. Some might say I’m addicted. I favor the train of thought that you’re only addicted if you try to kick the habit and can’t. I have never once tried to break the habit of people. So I guess that means I’m not addicted. Right?
During The War, we were all one big happy family. It was hang together or hang separately time, and we hung together. Terran and Peloran, cybernetic and artificial intelligence, and all the other little variants of the human race out there. We fought for the survival of a way of life where we could all live in peace. For all that it was one of the worst of times, it was also one of the best of times. Thank God it ended. If only we could have hung together after.
I’m going to take a break from my normal writing to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who has served on the bulwark of freedom. Whether you fought at Lexington or Somme, Gettysburg, or Normandy, or thousands of other names, thank you. Because of you, I am free to do what I do. Write. And others are free to read my works, or the works of others. Thank you for defending our freedom. The stories I write are dedicated to you.