The Call of the War

Scenes flashed through my mind. A beautiful, crystal clear day in spring flashed across my mind. Then a scene of chaos and gore screamed behind it. I saw flowers and plants of all sorts. And then I saw blazing, incinerating heat burn through my friends in seconds. I saw probably the most beautiful and eloquent sight my eyes have ever fallen on. Then I saw the most appalling sight that no man should or can bear. I saw my best friends joking around with each other and talking as if there wasn’t a care in the world. Then I saw them flying 20 feet and landing on the ground lifeless as the rocks they lay upon. I heard the birds’ sweet and melancholy songs. Then the screams of all ripping through the air rang in my ears. I heard the forests breath nearest to my side. I heard the deafening roars of machines all around me. The most eloquent and horrifying thing was when I saw and heard no more.

Carried across the dead, through and on my friends, and past the flowers, alive or gone, in a stretcher as my life spilled onto what we crossed. I thought of all I have ever did and thought only to try and block that roars, screams, songs, breaths and echoes of the chaos around me. I thought of all I ever had done. Unfortunately no matter what happy or horrifying moment to try and block this one out there was none so memorable as the dreading all around that was swallowing him as he passed in and out of conscious. I thought of only half a moment ago when all my friends had been filled with anxiety and eagerness to do what they had wanted to for so long. Than I was engulfed in a darkness that made me block what I wanted to block.

"Hey Charlie ya betta get over here! It’s your bid!"

"Hold no Mark I’ll be right over" replied Charlie Hauckhousser.

"If ya don’t get over here soon ya gonna lose ya turn!" grumbled Mark Garcia annoyingly.

"I’m here, I’m here! Now quit yor whining and dig into yor pockets ladies cuz Charlie’s about to clean you out," Charlie said boasting.

Then they all retorted with their own brags of their ‘skills’ and then they played the game. I was in my tent when I stepped out and was getting my boots on when I heard all this. I went out towards the overhanging rocks knowing nothing of how my friends would be landing on these very rocks as surgeons carried me towards the ‘hospital’ which was really only a tent with a red cross on it’s flaps. From there I went down into the fields trying to get a feel for the terrain before the inevitable loss of it as the bodies of friends and foes covered it. I looked up as the moon had reached the pinnacle of its journey and was heading into some gray clouds.

I said to myself, "Halfway there." When I was heading back I noticed some of the officers more experienced officers drinking up and hollering from there tents across the encampment and the soon to become drunk veterans with their guns on their laps and pots of coffee next to them. As I reentered my tent I put my boots by the door and rested my rifle on a small stand near my blankets to keep it dry and protected in case it rained. As I my heavy eyelids drooped I felt a blackness that I would later feel swarm in on me.

"He needs a clamp for his arm and bandages for these wounds," ordered a burly man. Immediately other people brought him all that they could and they begun a long and painful operation. Although it was hard to tell apart my conscious state and my unconscious state and tell what was real and what were just figments of my mind I knew that the screams and the sounds of mortar rounds and the occasional grapeshot were not figments of any kind. But what was happening as I lay on the stretcher being opened up and bandaged by men who didn’t even know whose life they were saving. Then the storm started. A heavy gale blew in from the east and suddenly the flaps of the ‘hospital’ flew open and my eyes with them. I saw what was a normal man who probably had done nothing of great magnitude in his life run as a grenade landed 3 feet from his side and him thrown, twisted, and screamed without opening his mouth far away. The last thing I saw was the expression of his face going from indescribable terror to a blissful one and the flaps of the tent being torn from the shrapnel coming from the grenade.

"Hey do you want a swig?" said one of my friends as we climbed into our jeeps.

I looked at his tired and dreary expression as he shoved it in front of my face. "No thanks I’m good."

He said, "Suit…urrselff." And taking a long drink tossed the bottled onto the ground and climbed into the jeep next to mine.

I looked at a rather stout man in front of me no older than 25. "Hey what’s your name?" I asked.

"Ben Olsokov. My sarge calls me "Brooklyn" but I aint sure why. Me and my family live in the Bronx," introduced Ben, "and yours?"

"Sean Wither. I live up in Minnesota. At least I did before the darn enemies blew it into nothing more than a crater that reflects the moon. You Christian aint you?" I replied.

"Yeah. What tipped you off?" asked Ben.

"No you have the Bible sticking out of your sack," I told him. Ben looked at his sack and saw the book. He pushed it in and closed it and then gave me a wide grin. We rode for about 6 hours before finally we came to a halt. Apparently they were suppose to go to Brooklyn Heights where they were to stop any vanguard trying to flank the main troops but they heard the battle beginning in the main army’s direction which wasn’t suppose to happen for a while yet. Finally they decided to go with the initial plan and head to Brooklyn Heights and if the main army was in trouble they could flank whatever was causing it. They got back in the jeeps and took off.

A sound of thunder hit the air and was impossible to tell if it was real thunder or the sound of mortar fire in the distance. A loud crack as millions of rifles blazed against each other. Suddenly I was lifted off stretcher and literally thrown onto the ground. I felt a sharp pain and went unconscious. Then I awoke and found myself getting up when the noise started to fall. I looked out upon the gore and death to find that the battle was moving away. I groaned in agony and looked back to see the ‘hospital’ although not first class was torn to pieces in the back and bodies lay splayed in every fashion all around. After an hour passed I got enough courage to try walking. Even though the pain is almost intolerable I felt a dire obligation to get moving. I found myself walking through rows of corpses and looking at their dog tags. I saw some that I never knew, even in the fathoms of my mind and some that I didn’t know but had others that seemed vaguely familiar. Especially two with the names ‘C. Hauckhousser’ and ‘M. Garcia’. Then after about a mile of walking I found myself walking towards the battle. My wounds started opening up again. I found myself reaching for a rifle on the ground and loading it with a shell I had kept in a puch on my uniform. I felt myself cock the rifle. I had lost all sense except the one that was the least understood yet everyone knew the most. My instinct which had never led anyone or I astray.

I remembered something of my past. Of how my mom used to always say, ‘The nature of the beast. The thing that separates man and animal."

I thought to myself "The only thing that separates man and beast is man’s arrogance". I aimed towards the battlefield when the pain would not allow me to do anything at all anymore. I had a chance to look at one more tag as I closed my eye. ‘B. Olsokov’. Crack. I fell with a thud and I was swarmed and engulfed by the blackness for the last time.

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So what do you guys think (for those who actually took the time to read it)?