Warrior's Solace

• Alex Yan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2013

He had been a bright young lad. He was the star of his school football team, yet he excelled in academic areas as well.
A model student, one that everybody admired. He was extremely popular and had a girlfriend and a stack of other friends too.

It seemed that nothing could go wrong with James.

His mother blamed the video games he played. He was always playing the shooting and war games, never playing games such as racing cars and soccer. As she said, rightly so, modern technology could make anything look realistic, and video games always exaggerated things and made things seem thrilling and all a big adventure.

His father blamed his grandfather's stories. James's grandfather had served during the Second World War and had always thrilled James with stories of it. James had loved all the action and suspense.

But for whatever the reason, James dropped out of university in his second year and enrolled in the Armed Forces. James was immediately sent to boot camp to join the dozens of others who were also to be deployed overseas. Just like his school years, he was successful in all areas. He could handle physical tasks but was also very capable at languages and more technical things.

When the call came his unit rushed out to join the fight. They were fighting in one of the most brutal wars seen in decades.

The most important transmission was a call for help in which the men sounded panicked and scared. The unit lost radio contact and was not heard from again. A few days after the initial disapperance, patrols found half the unit, bruised and battered, in the rugged hills close to their main base. When asked what had happened to them, they just shook their heads mutely.

No one knew what had happened on that day. There was speculation. Was it a special operation? Were the men just on routine patrol? All anyone knew was that the unit had performed an incredible feat, travelling more than 200km on foot through hostile terrain to return to base.

James didn't care. He was a wreck after the mission. He had seen friends and colleagues die aound him and heard their screams of agony and pain. He had been covered in blood, had seen mutilated limbs and enough violence to last him multiple lifetimes. He was finished. The great adventure turned out not to be much of a great adventure at all.

Shortly after however, James realised something. He realised that it would not be the right way to honour his deceased friends and colleagues for him to be a dead weight, depressed and just impeding the war effort. He had taken shelter for a while in thoughts of heroism but deep down he knew that he wasn't much of a hero. A hero would stand up and join the fight once more. A hero wouldn't be beaten so easily. A hero wouldn't let down himself and those around him.

The next day, James returned to the active duty roster.