UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

My closing entry on the last page of my first journal notebook, February 29, 1944:

One day I floundered through the clinging mud
And came upon a strange and trampled path.
With eager haste I plunged into the flood
Of souls there streaming with a fiery wrath.
A gripping band of flame soon seared my brain;
My tortured soul in giddy swirls was swept.
I knew not whence or where that giddy train
Was tending, but I felt my soul had leapt
The wall that parts the shadow from the light.
I had a vision through the darkest cloud;
A veil was lifted from my searching sight.
My fate lies with the dusty, common crowd,
For I must follow where it madly runs
And save myself by standing by its guns.