Truth of War Project Reflection
While studying the truth of war this
semester, I learned a lot about what war really is. Before this, I had always
thought of war as “fighting for your country” and never had actually thought
about what really happens during war, only the propaganda associated with this.
How soldiers go through so much and are actually killing people they have never
met, people who really are no different they are. Also how a soldier after going
through battle and killing these people, getting Post traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) and really what that does to them, how it turns their whole world upside
down and even gives them thought of suicide, to try and drown out the thoughts
that possess their minds. Before studying war, reading the books that we did,
and doing the Truth of War project, I had never actually thought deeply about
war. I had heard about PTSD and knew that by going to war that meant killing
people. However, I had never had a death written out for me to read, SH5 and
AQotWF showed me a deeper meaning in how soldiers had to kill people and really
what a lot of them were thinking while doing it. In AQotWF when Paul kills the
man in the trenches, it gave me for the first time a real picture of how much
killing someone affects soldiers, how deep of a level this gets to, how it’s not
just shooting into a random crowd of strangers, but really thinking about that
person, “did he have a family? What was his life like before this?” I always had
thought of war as more of a ‘point and shoot’ kind of thing, but this project
has completely changed my perspective on war.
The truth of war for me after having done this project is a list of
words, it is hard for me to put the truth of war into a sentence, however the
words I have come up with are these: Death, pain, suffering, tragedy, blood,
insanity, chaos, shooting, emotionally unstable, losing a loved one, the
unknown, horror. All of these words combined into one awful scene is what the
truth of war is for me. Knowing the affects of war has made me scared for my
friends and family who are in, or who may join the army. I understand that by
joining they are fighting for our country and keeping us safe, but the whole
idea of war is awful, and I wish it did not exist. By knowing everything bad
that I do about war, it gives me a sense of knowing what soldiers are going
through, I can never know for sure unless I join the army, but it gives me a
sense of knowing for them, knowing how much of their lives they give up to keep
us, our country safe.
Through reading the three books Slaughterhouse five, All Quiet on the
Western Front, and The Things They Carried, I learned a lot more about war and
what war is for a soldier. AQotWF was an okay read, I didn’t love reading it,
but I got through it and learned a lot from it. SH5 however, I did not like, it
was a very messed up book, and I would hate to meet the author because it just
seems (by his writing) that Kurt Vonnegut is a very messed up man to have come
up with all the things that he did in this book. The book TTTC was good, I
enjoyed reading it as far as I got. I feel like through reading these books I
got a good sense of what war is, these were written by people who actually went
htrough war, sharing hteir experiences. Reading about war has definitely helped
me to gain a better understanding of what war truly is. Writing the Culture of
war project definitely helped me to grow as a writer, especially in descriptive
writing. Through this writing piece I was able to use a lot of descriptive
writing and by refining it over again, and through my classmates helping me to
refine my work helped me to better my work, and make it easier to read for
someone besides me who did not write the book or come up with the
story.
The visual art piece I created to go along with the truth of war project
was a collage in the shape of Germany. My original idea was to create a collage
of war pictures over a wooden shape of Germany. Then, to have mirror shards
exploding out and away from the board, with a bullet in the center of it all,
all of this going along with the quote“we were eighteen and had begun to love
life, then we had to shoot it to pieces.” The idea being that their world, the
world that the mirror is reflecting had been shot to pieces by the bullet, being
pulled away and transforming into a big mess of death and suffering in war. In
the end, I still created the collage of war pictures, however instead of using
only one quote, I used three, all surrounding the outside of the collage and
Germany. The glass shards shooting off the board was too much to accomplish and
it would have been too hard to refine and would have been too hard to do. One of
the quotes I put on the outside of my project went something like, “killing is
unacceptable, therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large
numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” This quote seemed very powerful and
really seems to sum up war in some ways, how murderers kill innocent people and
are punished for it, but then our country encourages soldiers to kill men
without cause, only because our leader tells them to.
semester, I learned a lot about what war really is. Before this, I had always
thought of war as “fighting for your country” and never had actually thought
about what really happens during war, only the propaganda associated with this.
How soldiers go through so much and are actually killing people they have never
met, people who really are no different they are. Also how a soldier after going
through battle and killing these people, getting Post traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) and really what that does to them, how it turns their whole world upside
down and even gives them thought of suicide, to try and drown out the thoughts
that possess their minds. Before studying war, reading the books that we did,
and doing the Truth of War project, I had never actually thought deeply about
war. I had heard about PTSD and knew that by going to war that meant killing
people. However, I had never had a death written out for me to read, SH5 and
AQotWF showed me a deeper meaning in how soldiers had to kill people and really
what a lot of them were thinking while doing it. In AQotWF when Paul kills the
man in the trenches, it gave me for the first time a real picture of how much
killing someone affects soldiers, how deep of a level this gets to, how it’s not
just shooting into a random crowd of strangers, but really thinking about that
person, “did he have a family? What was his life like before this?” I always had
thought of war as more of a ‘point and shoot’ kind of thing, but this project
has completely changed my perspective on war.
The truth of war for me after having done this project is a list of
words, it is hard for me to put the truth of war into a sentence, however the
words I have come up with are these: Death, pain, suffering, tragedy, blood,
insanity, chaos, shooting, emotionally unstable, losing a loved one, the
unknown, horror. All of these words combined into one awful scene is what the
truth of war is for me. Knowing the affects of war has made me scared for my
friends and family who are in, or who may join the army. I understand that by
joining they are fighting for our country and keeping us safe, but the whole
idea of war is awful, and I wish it did not exist. By knowing everything bad
that I do about war, it gives me a sense of knowing what soldiers are going
through, I can never know for sure unless I join the army, but it gives me a
sense of knowing for them, knowing how much of their lives they give up to keep
us, our country safe.
Through reading the three books Slaughterhouse five, All Quiet on the
Western Front, and The Things They Carried, I learned a lot more about war and
what war is for a soldier. AQotWF was an okay read, I didn’t love reading it,
but I got through it and learned a lot from it. SH5 however, I did not like, it
was a very messed up book, and I would hate to meet the author because it just
seems (by his writing) that Kurt Vonnegut is a very messed up man to have come
up with all the things that he did in this book. The book TTTC was good, I
enjoyed reading it as far as I got. I feel like through reading these books I
got a good sense of what war is, these were written by people who actually went
htrough war, sharing hteir experiences. Reading about war has definitely helped
me to gain a better understanding of what war truly is. Writing the Culture of
war project definitely helped me to grow as a writer, especially in descriptive
writing. Through this writing piece I was able to use a lot of descriptive
writing and by refining it over again, and through my classmates helping me to
refine my work helped me to better my work, and make it easier to read for
someone besides me who did not write the book or come up with the
story.
The visual art piece I created to go along with the truth of war project
was a collage in the shape of Germany. My original idea was to create a collage
of war pictures over a wooden shape of Germany. Then, to have mirror shards
exploding out and away from the board, with a bullet in the center of it all,
all of this going along with the quote“we were eighteen and had begun to love
life, then we had to shoot it to pieces.” The idea being that their world, the
world that the mirror is reflecting had been shot to pieces by the bullet, being
pulled away and transforming into a big mess of death and suffering in war. In
the end, I still created the collage of war pictures, however instead of using
only one quote, I used three, all surrounding the outside of the collage and
Germany. The glass shards shooting off the board was too much to accomplish and
it would have been too hard to refine and would have been too hard to do. One of
the quotes I put on the outside of my project went something like, “killing is
unacceptable, therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large
numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” This quote seemed very powerful and
really seems to sum up war in some ways, how murderers kill innocent people and
are punished for it, but then our country encourages soldiers to kill men
without cause, only because our leader tells them to.
Shot to Pieces
The
men here on the front call this “the Great War, a World War.” They
say it’s because so many countries are involved, are fighting each other,
killing each other. I, Alec
Nelson, am an American citizen. Along with the British, French, and Russians we
are fighting Hitler and his allies Austria-Hungary and Italy. We are not the
only ones fated to witness this doom, other countries fight too. But they aren’t
the ones we worry about; they seem of less importance than Hitler, they aren’t
the ones slaughtering us day and night. .
.
I See my breath in the morning light. It
swirls and twists its way up into the pale, grey sky. Cold seeps into my bones,
cuts its way through me. I glance to the right and see men leaning against the
crudely dug out trench walls, propped up against their rifles, ice lining the
hair poking from underneath the metal bowls setting on their heads. Their
breath hangs in the air as a white mist, steaming up from their mouths like
smoke. It is quiet, so quiet. I hear nothing but the gentle whispering of
nearby willow trees. They are the only truly living things here. They stand
resolute, as dark shadows, their roots reaching deep into the frozen earth,
unyielding. Ancient. They whisper eerily to us. As if speaking for the men who
have long since gone, who no longer breathe. They keep us
silent.
To my left are sandbags and large coils of
barbed wire, slithering up the sides of sharpened stakes dug into the ground.
Beyond the front lie mountains. Tall tipped peaks reaching into the sky, covered
in white, cracked, icy ground surrounding them. Straight ahead is the enemy
line. Another trench dug deeper than any man is tall, stretching for miles along
Germany and the Western Front. The Germans were the first to dig trenches, but
we quickly followed suit, claiming boundaries as our own.
The enemy lies just across from us. There
they wait just as we do. Wait for another endless battle to rage on. There they
feel victory in our dead, but just as we do, sadness as well. Sadness for the
lives they have cost, for the lives they have destroyed. In between us is
crystallized white. It snowed all the while we fought, and then stopped along
with the battle. What remains from the quiet fall is a sheet of crystals. White
speckled with red. Death. Soldiers buried deep into the embrace of a frozen
grave. Fallen, their blood creating grotesque patterns in the fresh, crisp snow.
Now, there is only silence.
“Alec!” a soldier calls out to me. I
glance over and see Henry; he is gesturing out towards ‘no-man’s-land,’ an
excited, crazed look on his face. I scan the area where he is pointing and see .
. . nothing. Nothing moves, nothing makes a sound, nothing is living out there.
Then he starts becoming more frantic. He gestures out towards the enemy lines
excitedly, and is now attracting the attention of more soldiers. By now,
everyone in the area is looking hard, out towards the huge mess before us, but
no one seems to see what Henry is seeing. Then I know. A man can sit for so
long; can be in battle for so long, he starts to see things no one else does. He
rages on and on about a non-existent entity his mind has wrapped itself around.
Eventually the man goes so insane on the idea; he ends up leaving this world;
leaving his life.
I realize I can’t leave Henry to this fate;
I have to do something, help him in some way. I hike over to where he stands
peering over the edge of the trench, watching the non-existent form between us
and the enemy. “Henry,” I say calmly, “what do you see?” he looks at me with
fearful eyes, children’s eyes, “I-I . . . you don’t see it?” he asks. I shake
my head slowly, in pity for this man. “Henry, come sit with me, you need to
stay calm.” I look at him cautiously and tug at the sleeve of his coarse, green
jacket, feeling the frozen material. Henry turns his head away from me,
looking with longing out towards ‘no-man’s land.’ Suddenly his eyes grow wide.
He calls out, to the nothingness, his voice rolling across the still landscape.
Then he starts to scream. Loud shrieks resonating along the dugout, he reaches
his hands toward the sky, I whack them down but he shoves me away, earsplitting
sounds emanating from his throat as he raises his arms again.
All I can do is watch the raging soldier, there is nothing left to do, no
one can save this man, no one can make him see the truth. I watch helplessly as
Henry climbs out of the deep trench, his fingernails scraping the frozen walls
desperately, calling out to the invisible being. There’s a loud crack. Then
silence. I Watch as Henry topples over a string of barbed wire, his arms hanging
loosely over the line. Blood pours from an open wound in his stomach. Rich red
spills out onto the snow-covered ground, forming a glazed pool, melting the snow
around it, sending steam drifting up towards the heavens.
I think of a time when I was a young child;
I had fallen down and gashed my leg open. I remember thinking that was the most
blood I had ever seen as it dripped off of my tiny leg. I don’t think that
anymore. There is so much blood in battle, so much death, suffering, hunger,
cold and pain, but no feeling. No, we lost feeling the moment we stepped into
this wild mess of war. The first time we lost a soldier, a friend, a man we had
shared a drink with the night before, the man who only moments before had been
telling about his beautiful wife and little girl back home.
Henry will return home different than
anyone expected. He may not return
at all, even in the non-living form his body has resided to, if his body is not
retrieved before the frozen night ahead, he will be trapped in the frozen
wasteland forever. He will turn
into a solid piece of flesh, frozen in time, unchanging. Only melting with the
snow when spring comes, then slowly changing form, becoming unrecognizable, his
wife never knowing what happened, his little girl wondering her whole life what
happened to her daddy, why he never came
home.
I think about my own family back home in
the U.S.; my wife and three young boys. The four people who matter in my life,
my motivation for returning home after five years of war, since it started on
the 28th of July, 1914. The only reason I still live. If not for
them, I would have ended it long ago, would have thrown myself in front of a
German soldier and had him run his bayonet through my body, taking my life,
taking the appalling memories away with it. But no, I have to go back to my
family, they are the one thing in this world I still love, and live for. They
are all that matters, I must get home to them. Then I think of Henry again. See
his body lying on the sheet of white beneath him.
It begins. One of our men returns the shot
that killed Henry. Then everything falls to pieces. Bombs explode in front of
us; men shoot their machine guns, the rapid fire slicing through the cool
evening, “pat-pat-pat-pat.” Figures dart out from the trench opposite to us,
gripping machine guns and racing desperately towards us, willing themselves to
reach our trench before being shot and killed. I just stand there and watch.
Watch how quickly everything can grow, can become chaos, how quickly men’s lives
can end. I see my comrades shooting from our dugout, towards the Germans, some
now almost on us. I see one raise his arm high, a small round object clutched in
his pale, blood-stained hand. He throws it forward in a high arch, the small
form sailing through the air towards me.
My world explodes in front of me. Packed
dirt and ice shards fly up into the sky, blown up by the grenade. I see men
blown backwards, landing high in the branches of the colossal beings behind us.
Everywhere I look there is death and panic. I finally find my bearings, and race
over towards my comrades where we make ready to battle our way across the empty
expanse between us and the Germans. Then, all at once, everything goes sky high.
Dirt shoots into our faces, followed by a resounding boom and a flash of white
light. I take a desperate breath
and realize that my gas mask has flown off during the escapade. I lay on the
cold white below me, breathing hard, stunned. Then a fire starts to grow in my
eyes, burning into a furious intensity. My world disappears. Everything goes
black.
I hear muffled voices, try to open my eyes,
but everything stays dark. I reach up towards my face and feel a rough cloth
covering my eyes, and a wet rag with what smells of urine over my nose and
mouth. I tear everything off of my face, and immediately am surrounded by
nurses. They try to calm me down, to tell me that I must stay quiet. But all I
see is white light. I hear men moaning, something chiming, blasts far off, flies
buzzing near my ear, but see none of it. Panicking, I jump up from the cot I’m
on, and race towards what seems to be the origin of the light, away from the
noise, from the confusion of waking up. I feel myself knock over a large metal
tray which clatters to the floor as I hear a scream. Then I feel a slight prick
in the back of my neck, and immediately, I lose all ability to move, and drop
down to the hard-packed, dirt floor.
I wake up in a hot, white tent with a large
red cross painted on the top. Flies are buzzing around my face, and I hear the
moans of other men all around me. I lay there, quiet for a time, and then
remember what happened. The enemy had launched a grenade at us, followed by
some kind of gas. That is what had turned my world to fire out on the battle
field, why I couldn’t see anything before now. A nurse walks towards me. Dressed
completely in white, she has short, curly blond hair, brown eyes, and seems to
have a new, inexperienced look about her. She stands next to my cot and says in
an all too cheerful, practiced voice, “Well! Looks like the gas has got to you!
Turns out the Germans invented something new again, a gas called ‘Diphosgene.’
You didn’t get the worst of it so you should be better in a few days. You’ll
just have to stay here in the hospital, and away from that awful
battle field!” She smiles plastically and shakes her head, curls bouncing,
before continuing on, “You might feel a little bit swollen and burned up in
your nose and throat, but that will go away with time, and you’ll be up and
running again in no time.” She chirps. I look in loathing at her, and then let
my head fall back onto the hard, rusting cot, feeling springs pressing up
against my back. She stands awkwardly near me for a moment before tiptoeing
away, glancing down at her clipboard clutched in her pearly white hand.
‘She must not know.’ I think about when I
first came to the war, so innocent, not knowing all of the horrors that lay
before me. I thought only of fighting for my country and honor for my family.
Then I saw battle. Saw death, pain, and I was never the same. This young nurse
will find out what really goes on out here. I don’t want her to, no one does,
but it will happen. So many have joined, a content, frivolous person, and left
war changed, grim, solemn. No more innocents, only death. It will be no
different for this young woman.
For the next few days, I lie in the
makeshift hospital, and listen to the buzzing of flies, and the far-off
explosions from the front. I think about when I will go back and fight; when I
will be fated to see the death, the pain, and the hunger of battle. I push the
thought from my mind and glance around the tent for what feels like the
millionth time in the past three days. Many cots have emptied since I was
injured. Some men going back to the front, others having moved from this life. I
wonder how I will leave battle. If I will die during combat, or if I will simply
go home. Then I snap back to reality. No, I can’t die! I have a wife, children I
need to go back to, to take care of, to love. But I know that just going home is
not an option. I know I will remember the war, what I have seen, and what I went
through, with my every waking breath for the rest of my life.
My throat feels like sandpaper, it burns
and feels like a roaring flame has engulfed my face. Every breath, every
movement sends rivets of pain up through me. Twice a day, an orderly comes and
puts wet rags of a foul smelling substance over my face. It seems to make it
even harder to breath, harder to see, but finally I begin to recover. The
burning sensation stops spreading throughout me, and quiets to a dull ache in my
throat.
The time finally comes when I am well
enough to return to the front. I feel a deep dread about going back, but also
eagerness; eagerness to be back on the field, to see my fellow comrades, to see
who still lives, who has moved on. The nurse from my first day in the hospital
approaches me. The curls she once had are gone; her hair is now tied back in a
tight bun. Her brown eyes that once held so much life are now dull, glazed over
from looking at too many patients. As she draws nearer I hear her muttering to
herself, staring down at her clipboard clutched in her blood stained hand. Then
she glances up and sees me watching her. “Well, looks like you’re all better.”
Her voice holds no emotion; it is flat like her eyes. “You finally get to make
it back out to the front.” I notice how she doesn’t talk about the front as
flippantly as before, how the “awful
battlefield” is now just “the front” she has seen too much. This young
woman, so innocent, who only a few weeks before had been speaking of the war as
if it did not exist, not a care in the world. As if it was not all it was, a
terrible place of gore, of death. She now understands. Understands it all, and
wishes she didn’t, as like everyone else who has been destined to see this doom.
She looks at me once more, those flat eyes going only as far as my face; I
detect no emotion in them as she spins on her heal to help carry yet another
body from the infirmary.
After being crammed in the back of a large,
bulky truck loaded with ammunition for what seems to be an eternity, I arrive
at a long-term camp about ten miles from the hospital. Not all the way to the
front, but the promise of battle circulates throughout the barracks. I meet two
men who remind me of my old school friends. Men who always carry smug
expressions on their faces. Men who look like all they ever do is cause
mischief. One tall, one very short, both as thin as twigs, looking like they
would be blown away with the slightest breeze. There are so many friends I left
behind when I went to war, all thinking my father crazy for sending me out to
this wasteland. These two men call themselves Midget and Mac, although they
never would tell anyone their real names.
We share a few very strong drinks, them
saying that after lying in the infirmary for so long I could use the spark. I
wonder how they can handle such things with their size, but we end up so drunk,
we pass out on top of each other just outside the encampment, and are found late
in the morning by the cook, and are put on kitchen duty for our
‘laziness.’
There are a lot of free moments while I
stay at the base, time for thinking about the war, about home. I think of my
three young boys, all blond and blue eyed like me. Tall, built up young ones. I
wonder how different they look from five years ago when I left them. Then I
think of my wife. My beautiful wife, unlike the rest of us, she has long, curly
brown hair and deep green eyes. Her slight frame makes her seem undersized
around our three sturdy boys. I miss them immensely, wonder when I will escape
this life of war, of horror. I know I will never make my children go to war as
my father made me. He told me I
was fighting for honor, for my family, he made it sound so tame. I now know
differently, and would never put one of my boys through the revulsions I have
seen and experienced. Then I remember the day I signed up for the
army.
I had just turned twenty-five and my father
had decided it was time for me to do something else with my life besides raise
a family. He told me I was being
a coward for not fighting for my country. After days of yelling at me, and
giving me no choice but to oblige him, he marched me down to the temporary base
camp set up in our little town of Duluth Minnesota, and sent me off as a recruit
to my living hell.
Midget and Mac approach me, the two friends
stepping slowly over the hard packed snow, the full moon casting dancing shadows
on the crystallized white below. Midget hands me a drink and a small slip of
paper, “your term is up,” he states. I look in surprise down at the document and
see the words, “Alec Nelson, after
having served in the military for five years, your term is officially over. We
await your resignation to the army, and congratulate you on your trip back
home.” I sit in shocked silence, staring out onto the barren landscape
before me, listening to the nothingness of the night. Midget and Mac sit down on
either side of me, each of us enjoying the night air, the peace which so long
had evaded us. ‘I finally am going home.’ I think. I hadn’t even realized my
term was only five years; the only thought in my mind about getting home is how
much I miss my family. Always wanting to get home, never truly believing it
would happen.
I glance behind me at the dark forest
looming out towards distant mountains; everything is so serene, so still. Then,
I hear a far off buzzing, slowly growing louder and louder. All of a sudden a
screeching whistle cuts through the quiet night and an explosion rockets
through the forest, blowing us backwards into a pasty, canvas tent. I jump to
my feet and run to find cover as one explosion after another is dropped in a
perfect ring around the camp. All around me men are streaming out of their
frost-covered tents, rushing towards the nearest ditches dug by men before
them. Most only in their underclothes, not having time to dress before diving
out of the soft cocoon of sleep , clutching guns to their chests, looking
bewildered and bedraggled.
From a covering of logs I watch the
scene unfold. To my right a man is blown away, his ashes carried swiftly up into
the dark night sky, taking their place among the stars. The bombs have started
raining down inside camp, ‘an air raid,’ I think to myself, they pour down on
us, splattering mess wherever one lands. I race out of my hideout just as the
logs are blown away behind me. Splinters shoot towards me as I duck into the
deep forest where most of my comrades wait for the raid to end. A picture of my
wife enters my mind; all I see is her, beckoning for me to return home to her
and our boys. Taken by a surge of hope, of home, I Jump to my feet and race
across the frozen ground, bombs raining down everywhere, flashes blowing me off
of my feet, but I get up and keep running to a large log cabin where the
regiment leader stays. I burst through the door, hinges squealing.
The man looks up at me from where he cowers
under a cot, seeking protection. I yell at him to get up, he is so shocked he
does as I tell him and races over to where I stand in the doorway. “I need to
get home.” I command. “My wife, my children, I have not seen them in five years
and my term has ended!” I say as I thrust my life saving letter in his
direction. He snatches it up and glances over it quickly. He understands and
quickly nods his head, more in fear of the raid than understanding my
statement. The bombs have been coming for close to twenty minutes and I hear
them slowing down. ‘A short raid,’ I think. One last bomb falls from the night
sky, and then it all goes quiet. The regiment leader marches over to his desk
and pulls out a form, signs it, and hands it over. “You can go home,” he says
simply, then turns and crawls into his bed to nestle back into the restless
sleep that sweeps through everyone at
night.
Relief floods through me. ‘Just like
that,’ I think, ‘I am going home!’ I stroll out of the cabin. Then it hits me,
after all these years of war I am going home to see my family. My wife, my boys,
back to my old life. I saunter back to my quarters where I crawl under the thin
sheet offered to my frozen body. The fact that half the tent is gone, and the
edges of my bed are covered in ice doesn’t matter to me. There
is a fire in my heart, a hope of times to come. I fall asleep to soldiers
sauntering back from the woods, they build a fire near my cot and real heat
spreads through my body, warming me to the
core.
The train rattles and shakes, thrown off by
ice on the tracks. I huddle around a small fire built into a makeshift pot with
a dozen other tattered soldiers. Together, we wait for the train to stop, to
arrive at our destination, to be back at home. The wind howls outside, blowing
snow through the thin cracks of the train car. I wrote my wife the day before,
telling her I would be on the next train home. It pains me to know that the day
I arrive home, the first day in five years I get to see my wife, she has to
stand in a blizzard, in the bitter cold waiting for the train that will carry
me to her.
After what seems like an eternity, the bulking
mass of iron finally comes to a screeching halt. We shove the doors open,
letting in a new gust of frozen air. Despite the freezing temperatures and the
thin layer of ice coating our jackets, we all smile as we recognize the
familiarity of home. I step off the train and see four figures huddled in the
storm, snow blowing around them. A small silhouette steps out of the group,
long hair blowing free in the flurries. We stand motionless for a moment, then race towards each other.
Although my face is frozen, I can’t help but plaster a huge grin on my face, I
am finally home.
Facts:
1.
Propped up against their rifles.
2.
Sandbags and large coils of barbed wire, slithering up the sides of
sharpened
stakes dug into the ground.
3.
Another trench dug deeper than any man is tall, stretching for miles
along
Germany and the Western Front.
4.
Germans were the first to dig trenches, but we quickly followed
suit.
5.
‘No-man’s-land,’
6.
He starts to see things no one else
does.
7.
Back home in the U.S.
8.
Run his bayonet through me.
9.
Bombs explode.
10. Men shoot
machine guns.
11. Trench
opposite to us.
12. Blown up
by the grenade.
13. Gas mask
has flown off.
14. Wet rag
with what smells of urine over my nose and
mouth.
15. I feel a
slight prick in the back of my neck, and immediately, I lose all ability to
move.
16. White tent
with a large red cross.
17. A nurse
walks towards me. Dressed completely in
white.
18. Gas called
‘Diphosgene.
19. Swollen
and burned up in your nose and throat.
20. The
front.
21. I know I
will remember war, what I have seen happen, what I went
through
22. Wet rags
of foul smelling substance.
23. Bulky
truck loaded with ammunition.
24. Ditches
dug by men before them.
25. Bombs have
started raining down inside camp, ‘an air
raid.
26. The bombs
have been coming for close to twenty minutes and I hear them
slowing down. ‘A short raid.
27. Pulls out
a form, signs it, and hands it over. “You can go
home.
28. Years of
war, since it started the 28th of July,
1914.
29. The men
here on the front call this “the Great War,” because so many countries
are involved, fighting each other, killing each other. We, the U.S.; the
British,
French, and Russians are all fighting Germany and its allies
Austria-Hungary, and
Italy. Other countries fight too, but they aren’t the ones talked about,
they seem
of less importants than Hitler.
The
men here on the front call this “the Great War, a World War.” They
say it’s because so many countries are involved, are fighting each other,
killing each other. I, Alec
Nelson, am an American citizen. Along with the British, French, and Russians we
are fighting Hitler and his allies Austria-Hungary and Italy. We are not the
only ones fated to witness this doom, other countries fight too. But they aren’t
the ones we worry about; they seem of less importance than Hitler, they aren’t
the ones slaughtering us day and night. .
.
I See my breath in the morning light. It
swirls and twists its way up into the pale, grey sky. Cold seeps into my bones,
cuts its way through me. I glance to the right and see men leaning against the
crudely dug out trench walls, propped up against their rifles, ice lining the
hair poking from underneath the metal bowls setting on their heads. Their
breath hangs in the air as a white mist, steaming up from their mouths like
smoke. It is quiet, so quiet. I hear nothing but the gentle whispering of
nearby willow trees. They are the only truly living things here. They stand
resolute, as dark shadows, their roots reaching deep into the frozen earth,
unyielding. Ancient. They whisper eerily to us. As if speaking for the men who
have long since gone, who no longer breathe. They keep us
silent.
To my left are sandbags and large coils of
barbed wire, slithering up the sides of sharpened stakes dug into the ground.
Beyond the front lie mountains. Tall tipped peaks reaching into the sky, covered
in white, cracked, icy ground surrounding them. Straight ahead is the enemy
line. Another trench dug deeper than any man is tall, stretching for miles along
Germany and the Western Front. The Germans were the first to dig trenches, but
we quickly followed suit, claiming boundaries as our own.
The enemy lies just across from us. There
they wait just as we do. Wait for another endless battle to rage on. There they
feel victory in our dead, but just as we do, sadness as well. Sadness for the
lives they have cost, for the lives they have destroyed. In between us is
crystallized white. It snowed all the while we fought, and then stopped along
with the battle. What remains from the quiet fall is a sheet of crystals. White
speckled with red. Death. Soldiers buried deep into the embrace of a frozen
grave. Fallen, their blood creating grotesque patterns in the fresh, crisp snow.
Now, there is only silence.
“Alec!” a soldier calls out to me. I
glance over and see Henry; he is gesturing out towards ‘no-man’s-land,’ an
excited, crazed look on his face. I scan the area where he is pointing and see .
. . nothing. Nothing moves, nothing makes a sound, nothing is living out there.
Then he starts becoming more frantic. He gestures out towards the enemy lines
excitedly, and is now attracting the attention of more soldiers. By now,
everyone in the area is looking hard, out towards the huge mess before us, but
no one seems to see what Henry is seeing. Then I know. A man can sit for so
long; can be in battle for so long, he starts to see things no one else does. He
rages on and on about a non-existent entity his mind has wrapped itself around.
Eventually the man goes so insane on the idea; he ends up leaving this world;
leaving his life.
I realize I can’t leave Henry to this fate;
I have to do something, help him in some way. I hike over to where he stands
peering over the edge of the trench, watching the non-existent form between us
and the enemy. “Henry,” I say calmly, “what do you see?” he looks at me with
fearful eyes, children’s eyes, “I-I . . . you don’t see it?” he asks. I shake
my head slowly, in pity for this man. “Henry, come sit with me, you need to
stay calm.” I look at him cautiously and tug at the sleeve of his coarse, green
jacket, feeling the frozen material. Henry turns his head away from me,
looking with longing out towards ‘no-man’s land.’ Suddenly his eyes grow wide.
He calls out, to the nothingness, his voice rolling across the still landscape.
Then he starts to scream. Loud shrieks resonating along the dugout, he reaches
his hands toward the sky, I whack them down but he shoves me away, earsplitting
sounds emanating from his throat as he raises his arms again.
All I can do is watch the raging soldier, there is nothing left to do, no
one can save this man, no one can make him see the truth. I watch helplessly as
Henry climbs out of the deep trench, his fingernails scraping the frozen walls
desperately, calling out to the invisible being. There’s a loud crack. Then
silence. I Watch as Henry topples over a string of barbed wire, his arms hanging
loosely over the line. Blood pours from an open wound in his stomach. Rich red
spills out onto the snow-covered ground, forming a glazed pool, melting the snow
around it, sending steam drifting up towards the heavens.
I think of a time when I was a young child;
I had fallen down and gashed my leg open. I remember thinking that was the most
blood I had ever seen as it dripped off of my tiny leg. I don’t think that
anymore. There is so much blood in battle, so much death, suffering, hunger,
cold and pain, but no feeling. No, we lost feeling the moment we stepped into
this wild mess of war. The first time we lost a soldier, a friend, a man we had
shared a drink with the night before, the man who only moments before had been
telling about his beautiful wife and little girl back home.
Henry will return home different than
anyone expected. He may not return
at all, even in the non-living form his body has resided to, if his body is not
retrieved before the frozen night ahead, he will be trapped in the frozen
wasteland forever. He will turn
into a solid piece of flesh, frozen in time, unchanging. Only melting with the
snow when spring comes, then slowly changing form, becoming unrecognizable, his
wife never knowing what happened, his little girl wondering her whole life what
happened to her daddy, why he never came
home.
I think about my own family back home in
the U.S.; my wife and three young boys. The four people who matter in my life,
my motivation for returning home after five years of war, since it started on
the 28th of July, 1914. The only reason I still live. If not for
them, I would have ended it long ago, would have thrown myself in front of a
German soldier and had him run his bayonet through my body, taking my life,
taking the appalling memories away with it. But no, I have to go back to my
family, they are the one thing in this world I still love, and live for. They
are all that matters, I must get home to them. Then I think of Henry again. See
his body lying on the sheet of white beneath him.
It begins. One of our men returns the shot
that killed Henry. Then everything falls to pieces. Bombs explode in front of
us; men shoot their machine guns, the rapid fire slicing through the cool
evening, “pat-pat-pat-pat.” Figures dart out from the trench opposite to us,
gripping machine guns and racing desperately towards us, willing themselves to
reach our trench before being shot and killed. I just stand there and watch.
Watch how quickly everything can grow, can become chaos, how quickly men’s lives
can end. I see my comrades shooting from our dugout, towards the Germans, some
now almost on us. I see one raise his arm high, a small round object clutched in
his pale, blood-stained hand. He throws it forward in a high arch, the small
form sailing through the air towards me.
My world explodes in front of me. Packed
dirt and ice shards fly up into the sky, blown up by the grenade. I see men
blown backwards, landing high in the branches of the colossal beings behind us.
Everywhere I look there is death and panic. I finally find my bearings, and race
over towards my comrades where we make ready to battle our way across the empty
expanse between us and the Germans. Then, all at once, everything goes sky high.
Dirt shoots into our faces, followed by a resounding boom and a flash of white
light. I take a desperate breath
and realize that my gas mask has flown off during the escapade. I lay on the
cold white below me, breathing hard, stunned. Then a fire starts to grow in my
eyes, burning into a furious intensity. My world disappears. Everything goes
black.
I hear muffled voices, try to open my eyes,
but everything stays dark. I reach up towards my face and feel a rough cloth
covering my eyes, and a wet rag with what smells of urine over my nose and
mouth. I tear everything off of my face, and immediately am surrounded by
nurses. They try to calm me down, to tell me that I must stay quiet. But all I
see is white light. I hear men moaning, something chiming, blasts far off, flies
buzzing near my ear, but see none of it. Panicking, I jump up from the cot I’m
on, and race towards what seems to be the origin of the light, away from the
noise, from the confusion of waking up. I feel myself knock over a large metal
tray which clatters to the floor as I hear a scream. Then I feel a slight prick
in the back of my neck, and immediately, I lose all ability to move, and drop
down to the hard-packed, dirt floor.
I wake up in a hot, white tent with a large
red cross painted on the top. Flies are buzzing around my face, and I hear the
moans of other men all around me. I lay there, quiet for a time, and then
remember what happened. The enemy had launched a grenade at us, followed by
some kind of gas. That is what had turned my world to fire out on the battle
field, why I couldn’t see anything before now. A nurse walks towards me. Dressed
completely in white, she has short, curly blond hair, brown eyes, and seems to
have a new, inexperienced look about her. She stands next to my cot and says in
an all too cheerful, practiced voice, “Well! Looks like the gas has got to you!
Turns out the Germans invented something new again, a gas called ‘Diphosgene.’
You didn’t get the worst of it so you should be better in a few days. You’ll
just have to stay here in the hospital, and away from that awful
battle field!” She smiles plastically and shakes her head, curls bouncing,
before continuing on, “You might feel a little bit swollen and burned up in
your nose and throat, but that will go away with time, and you’ll be up and
running again in no time.” She chirps. I look in loathing at her, and then let
my head fall back onto the hard, rusting cot, feeling springs pressing up
against my back. She stands awkwardly near me for a moment before tiptoeing
away, glancing down at her clipboard clutched in her pearly white hand.
‘She must not know.’ I think about when I
first came to the war, so innocent, not knowing all of the horrors that lay
before me. I thought only of fighting for my country and honor for my family.
Then I saw battle. Saw death, pain, and I was never the same. This young nurse
will find out what really goes on out here. I don’t want her to, no one does,
but it will happen. So many have joined, a content, frivolous person, and left
war changed, grim, solemn. No more innocents, only death. It will be no
different for this young woman.
For the next few days, I lie in the
makeshift hospital, and listen to the buzzing of flies, and the far-off
explosions from the front. I think about when I will go back and fight; when I
will be fated to see the death, the pain, and the hunger of battle. I push the
thought from my mind and glance around the tent for what feels like the
millionth time in the past three days. Many cots have emptied since I was
injured. Some men going back to the front, others having moved from this life. I
wonder how I will leave battle. If I will die during combat, or if I will simply
go home. Then I snap back to reality. No, I can’t die! I have a wife, children I
need to go back to, to take care of, to love. But I know that just going home is
not an option. I know I will remember the war, what I have seen, and what I went
through, with my every waking breath for the rest of my life.
My throat feels like sandpaper, it burns
and feels like a roaring flame has engulfed my face. Every breath, every
movement sends rivets of pain up through me. Twice a day, an orderly comes and
puts wet rags of a foul smelling substance over my face. It seems to make it
even harder to breath, harder to see, but finally I begin to recover. The
burning sensation stops spreading throughout me, and quiets to a dull ache in my
throat.
The time finally comes when I am well
enough to return to the front. I feel a deep dread about going back, but also
eagerness; eagerness to be back on the field, to see my fellow comrades, to see
who still lives, who has moved on. The nurse from my first day in the hospital
approaches me. The curls she once had are gone; her hair is now tied back in a
tight bun. Her brown eyes that once held so much life are now dull, glazed over
from looking at too many patients. As she draws nearer I hear her muttering to
herself, staring down at her clipboard clutched in her blood stained hand. Then
she glances up and sees me watching her. “Well, looks like you’re all better.”
Her voice holds no emotion; it is flat like her eyes. “You finally get to make
it back out to the front.” I notice how she doesn’t talk about the front as
flippantly as before, how the “awful
battlefield” is now just “the front” she has seen too much. This young
woman, so innocent, who only a few weeks before had been speaking of the war as
if it did not exist, not a care in the world. As if it was not all it was, a
terrible place of gore, of death. She now understands. Understands it all, and
wishes she didn’t, as like everyone else who has been destined to see this doom.
She looks at me once more, those flat eyes going only as far as my face; I
detect no emotion in them as she spins on her heal to help carry yet another
body from the infirmary.
After being crammed in the back of a large,
bulky truck loaded with ammunition for what seems to be an eternity, I arrive
at a long-term camp about ten miles from the hospital. Not all the way to the
front, but the promise of battle circulates throughout the barracks. I meet two
men who remind me of my old school friends. Men who always carry smug
expressions on their faces. Men who look like all they ever do is cause
mischief. One tall, one very short, both as thin as twigs, looking like they
would be blown away with the slightest breeze. There are so many friends I left
behind when I went to war, all thinking my father crazy for sending me out to
this wasteland. These two men call themselves Midget and Mac, although they
never would tell anyone their real names.
We share a few very strong drinks, them
saying that after lying in the infirmary for so long I could use the spark. I
wonder how they can handle such things with their size, but we end up so drunk,
we pass out on top of each other just outside the encampment, and are found late
in the morning by the cook, and are put on kitchen duty for our
‘laziness.’
There are a lot of free moments while I
stay at the base, time for thinking about the war, about home. I think of my
three young boys, all blond and blue eyed like me. Tall, built up young ones. I
wonder how different they look from five years ago when I left them. Then I
think of my wife. My beautiful wife, unlike the rest of us, she has long, curly
brown hair and deep green eyes. Her slight frame makes her seem undersized
around our three sturdy boys. I miss them immensely, wonder when I will escape
this life of war, of horror. I know I will never make my children go to war as
my father made me. He told me I
was fighting for honor, for my family, he made it sound so tame. I now know
differently, and would never put one of my boys through the revulsions I have
seen and experienced. Then I remember the day I signed up for the
army.
I had just turned twenty-five and my father
had decided it was time for me to do something else with my life besides raise
a family. He told me I was being
a coward for not fighting for my country. After days of yelling at me, and
giving me no choice but to oblige him, he marched me down to the temporary base
camp set up in our little town of Duluth Minnesota, and sent me off as a recruit
to my living hell.
Midget and Mac approach me, the two friends
stepping slowly over the hard packed snow, the full moon casting dancing shadows
on the crystallized white below. Midget hands me a drink and a small slip of
paper, “your term is up,” he states. I look in surprise down at the document and
see the words, “Alec Nelson, after
having served in the military for five years, your term is officially over. We
await your resignation to the army, and congratulate you on your trip back
home.” I sit in shocked silence, staring out onto the barren landscape
before me, listening to the nothingness of the night. Midget and Mac sit down on
either side of me, each of us enjoying the night air, the peace which so long
had evaded us. ‘I finally am going home.’ I think. I hadn’t even realized my
term was only five years; the only thought in my mind about getting home is how
much I miss my family. Always wanting to get home, never truly believing it
would happen.
I glance behind me at the dark forest
looming out towards distant mountains; everything is so serene, so still. Then,
I hear a far off buzzing, slowly growing louder and louder. All of a sudden a
screeching whistle cuts through the quiet night and an explosion rockets
through the forest, blowing us backwards into a pasty, canvas tent. I jump to
my feet and run to find cover as one explosion after another is dropped in a
perfect ring around the camp. All around me men are streaming out of their
frost-covered tents, rushing towards the nearest ditches dug by men before
them. Most only in their underclothes, not having time to dress before diving
out of the soft cocoon of sleep , clutching guns to their chests, looking
bewildered and bedraggled.
From a covering of logs I watch the
scene unfold. To my right a man is blown away, his ashes carried swiftly up into
the dark night sky, taking their place among the stars. The bombs have started
raining down inside camp, ‘an air raid,’ I think to myself, they pour down on
us, splattering mess wherever one lands. I race out of my hideout just as the
logs are blown away behind me. Splinters shoot towards me as I duck into the
deep forest where most of my comrades wait for the raid to end. A picture of my
wife enters my mind; all I see is her, beckoning for me to return home to her
and our boys. Taken by a surge of hope, of home, I Jump to my feet and race
across the frozen ground, bombs raining down everywhere, flashes blowing me off
of my feet, but I get up and keep running to a large log cabin where the
regiment leader stays. I burst through the door, hinges squealing.
The man looks up at me from where he cowers
under a cot, seeking protection. I yell at him to get up, he is so shocked he
does as I tell him and races over to where I stand in the doorway. “I need to
get home.” I command. “My wife, my children, I have not seen them in five years
and my term has ended!” I say as I thrust my life saving letter in his
direction. He snatches it up and glances over it quickly. He understands and
quickly nods his head, more in fear of the raid than understanding my
statement. The bombs have been coming for close to twenty minutes and I hear
them slowing down. ‘A short raid,’ I think. One last bomb falls from the night
sky, and then it all goes quiet. The regiment leader marches over to his desk
and pulls out a form, signs it, and hands it over. “You can go home,” he says
simply, then turns and crawls into his bed to nestle back into the restless
sleep that sweeps through everyone at
night.
Relief floods through me. ‘Just like
that,’ I think, ‘I am going home!’ I stroll out of the cabin. Then it hits me,
after all these years of war I am going home to see my family. My wife, my boys,
back to my old life. I saunter back to my quarters where I crawl under the thin
sheet offered to my frozen body. The fact that half the tent is gone, and the
edges of my bed are covered in ice doesn’t matter to me. There
is a fire in my heart, a hope of times to come. I fall asleep to soldiers
sauntering back from the woods, they build a fire near my cot and real heat
spreads through my body, warming me to the
core.
The train rattles and shakes, thrown off by
ice on the tracks. I huddle around a small fire built into a makeshift pot with
a dozen other tattered soldiers. Together, we wait for the train to stop, to
arrive at our destination, to be back at home. The wind howls outside, blowing
snow through the thin cracks of the train car. I wrote my wife the day before,
telling her I would be on the next train home. It pains me to know that the day
I arrive home, the first day in five years I get to see my wife, she has to
stand in a blizzard, in the bitter cold waiting for the train that will carry
me to her.
After what seems like an eternity, the bulking
mass of iron finally comes to a screeching halt. We shove the doors open,
letting in a new gust of frozen air. Despite the freezing temperatures and the
thin layer of ice coating our jackets, we all smile as we recognize the
familiarity of home. I step off the train and see four figures huddled in the
storm, snow blowing around them. A small silhouette steps out of the group,
long hair blowing free in the flurries. We stand motionless for a moment, then race towards each other.
Although my face is frozen, I can’t help but plaster a huge grin on my face, I
am finally home.
Facts:
1.
Propped up against their rifles.
2.
Sandbags and large coils of barbed wire, slithering up the sides of
sharpened
stakes dug into the ground.
3.
Another trench dug deeper than any man is tall, stretching for miles
along
Germany and the Western Front.
4.
Germans were the first to dig trenches, but we quickly followed
suit.
5.
‘No-man’s-land,’
6.
He starts to see things no one else
does.
7.
Back home in the U.S.
8.
Run his bayonet through me.
9.
Bombs explode.
10. Men shoot
machine guns.
11. Trench
opposite to us.
12. Blown up
by the grenade.
13. Gas mask
has flown off.
14. Wet rag
with what smells of urine over my nose and
mouth.
15. I feel a
slight prick in the back of my neck, and immediately, I lose all ability to
move.
16. White tent
with a large red cross.
17. A nurse
walks towards me. Dressed completely in
white.
18. Gas called
‘Diphosgene.
19. Swollen
and burned up in your nose and throat.
20. The
front.
21. I know I
will remember war, what I have seen happen, what I went
through
22. Wet rags
of foul smelling substance.
23. Bulky
truck loaded with ammunition.
24. Ditches
dug by men before them.
25. Bombs have
started raining down inside camp, ‘an air
raid.
26. The bombs
have been coming for close to twenty minutes and I hear them
slowing down. ‘A short raid.
27. Pulls out
a form, signs it, and hands it over. “You can go
home.
28. Years of
war, since it started the 28th of July,
1914.
29. The men
here on the front call this “the Great War,” because so many countries
are involved, fighting each other, killing each other. We, the U.S.; the
British,
French, and Russians are all fighting Germany and its allies
Austria-Hungary, and
Italy. Other countries fight too, but they aren’t the ones talked about,
they seem
of less importants than Hitler.