Gallipolli

• Josiah Patch, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2015

GALLIPOLLI (Anzac War)


The trenches were stained with blood. Men lay on their backs facing the sky blankly. Shots were being fired overhead, the sky was smoky. I shuddered, the scene was all too horrible to describe. Holding the bullet wound on my leg I hopped over and grabbed the gun that lay beside on of my dead comrades. Refilling the cartridges and shoving some in my pocket for later use, I tried to climb out of the trench. A bullet whizzed past my ear nicking the top of it and drawing a thin stream of blood, but I kept going, and once I was on my feet I started to fire. Men were falling around me, but I tried to ignore their cries of pain. Suddenly something hit me hard in the stomach and I staggered back under the impact. I stared down at the welling blood and knew that it was a bullet that had hit me. Someone tried to pull me back into the trench to get me out of danger, but I wasn’t going to give up now. The war wasn’t finished and I planned to see it to the end, and I was determined that at the end we would win. I rushed up, ignoring the dizziness and charged into the enemy, firing shot after shot, stabbing and enemy who got in the way of my bayonet.
As I ran, someone yelled something to me but it was too late. I fell to my knees and crouched in pain. Flashes of red and white were flashing across my eyes. My vision blurry, I tried to crawl, but no movement was there. The only movement was my mind! My thoughts raced through everyone I had ever known. Dad who had died in a logging accident leaving myself and my beautiful mother to have to do all the work on the farm. My best mate Harry who I cradled in my lap as he died from an infected shrapnel wound in his side, and my loveliest thought was Alice. She was my girlfriend before I left for this cursed war. Each night I would lay awake, looking at the stars, picturing her beautiful eyes that used to always look into mine and remember the times we had together.
Why I was here today? To make all of the others proud of me by being brave and being a hero. But now I was incapable of all those things as I was dying now too just like dad and Harry.
Dying, I was not afraid of. Leaving the people I had ever cared about was what hurt. Another jab of pain erupted through my body and I cried out, all thoughts gone but one. Death! The thought was there for only a moment, it went red, then…there was nothing.

THE END

Life was harder than anything we could ever imagine.