To Stay Alive or Stay What Is

On a frozen hill where wood is as wet as rain,  
I don't think the heroes will make it through this night.  
 
They have their flag, their pride, and frostbitten fingers and toes.  
 
Life without success is a parody.  
Either you learn to laugh at yourself, kill yourself, or succeed.  
 
But they need a fire to live through the night, and what to burn, what to burn?  
 
One flashes the most practically absurd idea and stirs the dissonance between life and pride.  
 
Why don't we burn​ the flag?  
 
Could you live knowing that to keep yourself alive,  
you dishonored what you live for?  
 
And standstill.  
 
Burn a man. He just died in final haste.  
 
But he was aligned with this flag. He is a life culminated by its red.  
By honor, we must burry him, not burn him and despise his sacrifice.  
 
In an alternate world, they lit the flag ablaze, and​ made it through the night, and when seen, resting,  
could not be recognized because the flag was their identity.  
And did not survive after being overlooked.  
 
In reality, they kept the flag, and bore the cold to death, retained identity  
when found as bodies on the morrow,  
and memorialized as heroes to the home of the flag.  
 
Which leads to a troubling question.  
Will you die with a naive hubris to yourself  
or live with an ashes to ashes self-concept?