My grandfather's bayonet

A few days before I left to go into the military, I got a call from my dad telling me to drop by and see my grandfather one last time before I left. My grandfather was in his 80's and suffering from emphysema. It wasn't the last time I saw him, but he didn't last much longer. My grandfather had tried to talk me out of going into the military and I was expecting more of the same. We spoke for a while and he gave me a box of his war relics. I had never seen them before. It turns out neither had my dad. My grandfather was a WWI veteran. He rarely spoke of the war and volunteered nothing. On the few occasions we pestered him for stories he would tell us about routine things. He said they were mostly farm boys who were very naive of the world. Evidently much of what they had to eat was cheese and he said the French would get very angry with them for cutting out the mold with their knives claiming they were throwing out the best part. He never mentioned anything about combat and was very evasive about it. He was an Army officer in the Signal Corps when carrier pigeons were the primary method of secure communications. Inside the box were several things like his leggings, a mess kit, his helmet, his dog tags, and a little metal message cylinder that attached to the leg of a pigeon. Most of it was just miscellaneous things. As I was going through his things I found his bayonet and it seemed pretty remarkable. It had a triangular blade. My grandfather said if it looked as if you were going to be captured, you ditched your bayonet because if the German's caught you with it they would shoot you on the spot. Evidently the triangular blade caused a nasty injury and many bled out or died of infection because of its design. I noticed a notch carved into the handle near the blade. At first it didn't occur to me what it was and I asked him about it. His face turned pretty pale and it hit me as to why it was there. It sent chills down my spine knowing I was holding something that had killed another person. He said he hadn't been in France very long and it was his first trip to the front. The Germans shelled them for hours and then attacked in waves. One of them came over the trench and he bayoneted him as he had no time to reload. It was a young German officer who expired soon after. My grandfather had kept his helmet for a while, but eventually sold it. He was starting to get very emotional and tear up, which I thought strange because we were talking about something that happened six decades prior. He said he thought about it later and realized that German officer was no different than him. He was someone who had a family and dreams just like everyone else. It was just someone who lived under different circumstances. He wondered aloud if that German officer would have sold his helmet for a few dollars so casually. My grandfather was a very devout Christian. He said it had always bothered him that he had profited from the death of another, and he knew he was going to have to answer to his maker for it. That's just the kind of man he was. A few years after his death my grandmother said they had made a couple of trips to Europe so he could visit the graves of some of his fallen comrades. He didn't speak much of it even to her.

I was fortunate to have never seen combat, but I know that it affects those who have for the rest of their days. War really is hell. It should never be glorified. It should never be entered into lightly. The older I get the more I think about how some are so willing to send our youth into harms way without really thinking things through for both them and those who are on the other end of those bombs. Even those who survive don't win. Only those who profit from it. My grandfather understood that. I wish I had sooner.