I Have Never Been So Wrong.

• Lia Evans, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2011

It was spring and the flowers had just begun to bloom. There was excitement in the air, I was a young man, fit and healthy; ready to fight… or so I thought.

Everyone lined the street to wish us well, the young and the old, and my Mary, dear sweet Mary. She smiled at me from that upstairs window. I smiled and waved and promised I’d be home soon.

I have never been so wrong.

I looked back one last time at the town I loved so dearly. It held so many memories, I had grown up in this town, gone to school in this town, met my dear Mary in this town. I couldn’t wait for the day I would return and ask for my Mary’s hand in marriage. It had been all set, I had asked her father, and I had the ring, the day I returned would be the beginning of the rest of our lives.
We all marched off, proud to be fighting for our country. It was a celebration.
However, that excitement soon turned sour. What had begun as adventure, a chance to travel had soon turned to a fight for our lives. We no longer were fighting for our country, we were struggling for survival.
The battle was tough and the days were long, but you learn to push through, to stand tall despite the circumstance. You learn that if you don’t you will fall. You have to hold onto something, the memory of home and my Mary kept me strong, through those long months.

We fought hard, although plagued with disease, we fought. We fought through the boiling heat of the day and the ice cold, sub zero temperatures of the night.
I lost many things that year, my friends and comrades, many of my possessions, most of my sanity and my right leg. I saw so many people suffer, so many people die. The war cost too many people their lives and the lives of their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.
When the war was finally over, after what seemed like an eternity, I was allowed to go home. I couldn’t contain my excitement. After a year I was finally coming home, my life was about to begin.

It was a long, hard trek to get home, with only the use of one leg, and barely a cent left to my name, but the thought of holding my Mary again kept me pushing through. I finally reached the station that would lead me home. That feeling is a feeling that I have never felt before; complete and utter relief. The knowledge that that terrible war was behind me had me jumping for joy.
But as I stepped off that train and looked out at what remained of my home, I felt anything but excitement.

My town was completely destroyed, not a soul remained. Dead or gone I would never know. I would never see my Mary again, and as this reality finally hit me I fell to the ground in despair. This had been my strength, my hope for all those years, now I had nothing.
However, life goes on, and the world keeps turning. Now don’t think I didn’t mourn, oh I mourned and cried and tried to pretend it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. But there comes a time when you realise that no matter how much you try to deny it, life is the way it is. There is nothing you can do to change it. So, you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and slowly but surely turn around and face the future.