The Ghost of You
Four.
Four.
The patriot of self-inflicted Calvary. Horror. Ferocious and explicit horror. It unmasked itself not in the blood stained terrain on which we stomped and crawled; nor with the toxic threat of the German soldiers’ dexterity , not the excruciated roars of the dying troops or even the odd spare limb, cast aside like litter on a suburban walkway. The real terror was in the tears of the soldiers gazing longingly at the framed, frozen smiles of their loved ones, in the goodbye letters they write beforehand, “just in case, y’know?” The true misery wasn’t in the corpses of the soldiers dying on the battlefront, it was in the young boy growing up without a father, the wife who couldn’t pay her bills on her own, the sister with no one to collect her medication. The stories they told of the ones they left behind, there’s your torment.
Humbling to say the least. All over-earnestness aside, with every casualty I wished myself in their place. Taking their bullets, losing my arm, throwing myself over that grenade. I would’ve did anything to prevent another good man, with the secret to complacency in the palm of his hand, from being stripped away from a simplistically happy life. Yet, the opportunity never arose. I fired as my team fired, I ran in a steady synchronisation with the march of their scuffed boots, I lived as they lived. I spent most nights lying perfectly awake, exhaustion never crossing my path, pondering and questioning why God- if there really was one- would leave me, a speck of irrelevancy on his globe of life, healthy and alive while good men were brought to doom’s knees. Unfairness incarnate. If anything I cursed fate for it’s sick plot, criticised the cruel motives of destiny and rejected the principles of karma. In this war, death and destruction and eradication were day to day life. Where we fought, and where they fell, that was the real side of life, the ugly true-self abandoning it’s polished alter-ego. Welcome to Limbo, it doesn’t get much better than this.
The air of injustice rife in the air I fought on for several months, moving from one battlefield to another. Gunner towers loomed on every turn- the enemies’ predatory reminder of their unlikelihood to surrender. Not much changed on our side, our concept of time had become reworked and redefined. In battle, one simple minute could evoke a typical hour’s worth of thoughts and emotions. Silence was never an asset to our attack or defence, the quiet simply made our every move amplified to the acute ears of our predators. Yet, any hour of sleep and rest was constricted to feel like a brief few minutes, a momentary and minute lapse of labour. Every so often, a new regiment would be introduced to this bleak lifestyle we had been forced to adapt to. Their names and faces never really completely registered with me, I wasn’t here to make friends, I wasn’t staying around long. However, it was just as the ferocity of winter hit that a new arrival transitioned from nameless face to intriguing enigma, a spark to my dormant curiosity.
The patriot of self-inflicted Calvary. Horror. Ferocious and explicit horror. It unmasked itself not in the blood stained terrain on which we stomped and crawled; nor with the toxic threat of the German soldiers’ dexterity , not the excruciated roars of the dying troops or even the odd spare limb, cast aside like litter on a suburban walkway. The real terror was in the tears of the soldiers gazing longingly at the framed, frozen smiles of their loved ones, in the goodbye letters they write beforehand, “just in case, y’know?” The true misery wasn’t in the corpses of the soldiers dying on the battlefront, it was in the young boy growing up without a father, the wife who couldn’t pay her bills on her own, the sister with no one to collect her medication. The stories they told of the ones they left behind, there’s your torment.
Humbling to say the least. All over-earnestness aside, with every casualty I wished myself in their place. Taking their bullets, losing my arm, throwing myself over that grenade. I would’ve did anything to prevent another good man, with the secret to complacency in the palm of his hand, from being stripped away from a simplistically happy life. Yet, the opportunity never arose. I fired as my team fired, I ran in a steady synchronisation with the march of their scuffed boots, I lived as they lived. I spent most nights lying perfectly awake, exhaustion never crossing my path, pondering and questioning why God- if there really was one- would leave me, a speck of irrelevancy on his globe of life, healthy and alive while good men were brought to doom’s knees. Unfairness incarnate. If anything I cursed fate for it’s sick plot, criticised the cruel motives of destiny and rejected the principles of karma. In this war, death and destruction and eradication were day to day life. Where we fought, and where they fell, that was the real side of life, the ugly true-self abandoning it’s polished alter-ego. Welcome to Limbo, it doesn’t get much better than this.
The air of injustice rife in the air I fought on for several months, moving from one battlefield to another. Gunner towers loomed on every turn- the enemies’ predatory reminder of their unlikelihood to surrender. Not much changed on our side, our concept of time had become reworked and redefined. In battle, one simple minute could evoke a typical hour’s worth of thoughts and emotions. Silence was never an asset to our attack or defence, the quiet simply made our every move amplified to the acute ears of our predators. Yet, any hour of sleep and rest was constricted to feel like a brief few minutes, a momentary and minute lapse of labour. Every so often, a new regiment would be introduced to this bleak lifestyle we had been forced to adapt to. Their names and faces never really completely registered with me, I wasn’t here to make friends, I wasn’t staying around long. However, it was just as the ferocity of winter hit that a new arrival transitioned from nameless face to intriguing enigma, a spark to my dormant curiosity.
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