Just a Rifle

This fanfiction article, Just a Rifle, was written by LowBudgetKnight. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission.

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"It's funny how people argue over such a poem. Even I myself do such from time to time with my colleagues. It's meaning is still questionable, maybe that what makes it so controversial. "

―Yuri Havenwood, Professor and Historian of the Human-Covenant War

Just A Rifle is a famous poem written by an unknown UNSC soldier during the Human-Covenant War, the author was never found as no one ever took credit for its writing and no physical appearance of the poem itself was even found until it was shared onto waypoint, leading some to speculate that it was written by Anti-UEG parties to even ONI themselves. The poem first appeared sometime around 2546 and slowly began to spread and be retold by other soldiers. The poem goes as follows.

"

Just a rifle is what I am.

Nothing more than metal and lead.

Built only to enforce the dead.

From the scalie bastards to our fellow man.

I'm just a rifle in a massive plan.

Following orders in No Mans land.

Emotions are lethal, but so is my hand.

Because a rifle is built to kill without remorse.

But so was I of fuckin' course.

Just a Rifle, no more no less.

Just a rifle doing it's best.

To keep whatever peace has been left.

The damn thing doesn't even have a name.

Among the hell that took it as a claim.

Its just a rifle they will say.

Not a man awaiting a grave.

Just a Rifle is all I am.

Just a Rifle in this forsaken land.

But the rifles will still march, to protect their own homes.

Because that's the way they'll make sure it goes."

―The poem of Just a Rifle

While the poem originally started in the UNSC ranks, it later found itself on Waypoint when a fellow soldier shared it online during her leave and the poem began to grow in popularity among Innsurectionist forces as well after it began to reach their own. This was the start of its debate among the people. Some saw it as Anti-UNSC propaganda due to how it mentions a soldier being stripped of his humanity while others found it as Pro-UNSC propaganda due to its mentions of insulting the aliens and the ending where it says how they'll still fight to protect Earth and her colonies. This would later evolve into conspiracy theories about ONI starting it for whatever reason to even Innsurectionist double agents using the poem to help turn UNSC soldiers away from the UEG and to instead join them. And to this day its meaning is still left unresolved.

Because the poem has many ways to view it from, it is rather hard to say what the writer was trying to portray to the reader, psychologists who read the poem believes that the writer at the time would have most likely been struggling to come to terms about their part in the war and the actions they partook in seeing it as a way to help with their inner struggle and thoughts while also trying to remind themselves of why they were there. This is the most accepted theory of it's meaning.

"War does things to people that civilians can't understand. Perhaps that is why there are such stupid theories about it while soldiers themselves seem to understand much of it's saying though no one agrees on one single idea of it. It really is rare to find such writing like this in trying times and have it survive. Who knows really what they were trying to say...maybe they wrote it because they were bored even."

―Dr. Evan McClousky, Physcholosist at the Queen Elizabeth University in Syndey, Australia.