War

• Kaylum Gietzmann, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2016

I was creeping through the bush like a jaguar on patrol behind the other troops. All of a sudden, a Japanese soldier came out of nowhere and tackled me to the ground. He tried to stab me, and I dodged the strikes like a snake being captured.
We fought for at least a whole three minutes, then realizing that he could not win, he jumped off me and started running. He ran like a rabbit being chased by a fox.
As I was getting up, I pulled out my handgun and shot him in the leg. The last I saw of him, he was limping away like a crippled animal. When I caught up with the other Australian troops, I told them to be wary, there may be Japanese soldiers in the trees. The trees were as big as the Eiffel
Tower. We heard a noise, and one of the other troops saw a figure moving in the bushes. We all opened fire on the soldier and scared him away. While we were reloading our guns, we heard a lot of noises and thought there must be a lot of soldiers in the bushes.
The General said, “Keep your eyes sharp, they could be all around us!” We formed a circle so they couldn’t attack from behind.
“If you see anything moving in the bushes, shoot it!” the General said.
It went quiet, as if you could hear a pin drop. Then all of a sudden, there was yelling louder than thunder. The ground rumbled like a heard of elephants. All around us were Japanese soldiers coming from every direction.
The General yelled, “Fire!”
We opened fire. It was a really long hour, but we defeated half of them and the others ran away. When it was all over, we noticed that three of our troops had been badly injured, and some others had minor wounds. As we walked back to camp, one of the troops died. So when we got back to camp, we buried the soldier with respect.