Without Valour

• Brittany Gaiser, Grade 9, Oxley College
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

How well I remember the flurry of guns. How the insects fluttered in our stomachs, desperate to escape. The yells from grown men were shrill enough to send shivers up spines. Gunshots had flown into the blind night and captured the lives of the living. Dust had wavered off the depths of the trenches and hearts had stopped. Crimson blood had been spiderwebbed across the bodies with glass eyes that mirrored the moon.
My back had slouched against the dugout stone and my lungs ached with each breath. If you told someone at home that stopping one’s heartbeat was not human at all, you’d be wrong—because it’s happening every second. The quake shuddered through my bones, dropping rubble on my swollen legs that could not endure the weight to stand.
Everyone was determined to return home alive, except for me. The guilt had encased my heart like the telegrams that had been sent to families, repeating the lines; deeply regret to inform… missing in action… killed in action. The typed letters that gave people anguish.
I had to leave my family; and I miss them dearly, but I could not face them again. The despondent rush of life had greeted me. I had to move, I had to survive. My name could not appear on one of those cards.
And I couldn’t bring myself to stand. I had stolen so many lives in just a few months; which nobody should ever have to do in their existence. My family couldn’t know that. They didn’t even know that I went to war.
The lacerations on my knees were deep and oozing with scarlet. The explosions were constantly rattling my soul, and the nostalgic memory of my home once before was a surge of pain.
My dust choked lungs forbid the rise of my legs. Screams and roars had erupted in my ears with the fire of shells. The sights of dead men had reflected into my eyes—scorching into the conscious void.
For we know of the valour that brought us here, and it is now forever absent from our hearts.