Conscription

• Jayda Franks, Grade 10, Cairns State High School
• Short Story
• 2017

Excellence Award in the 'Spread The Word 2017' competition

They say fighting for your country is something to be proud of. That dying for your country is an honour. That you’re a hero, a saviour, someone who history will remember, a name children will run their stubby fingers over in great stone memorials and mumble a thank you for your sacrifice. That it’s an everlasting glory beyond compare.
But what if I never asked for glory?
What if I was content to live a quiet life, carrying on my family’s shoemaking business?
What if I didn’t want to just be a name scratched into an ugly chunk of rock that is supposed to symbolise my unfaltering bravery?
What if I’m not brave at all?

I stared at my face in the mirror. My mother stood behind me, clippers in hand. Her face was a portrait of utter despair.
“Henry,” Mother said, for the hundredth time. She said it with such heartbreak, such torture. I watched my mirror-self blink grey eyes, the deep, dark circles beneath them giving my pale face a pallid, dead appearance. Above my head, the clippers trembled.
Once my hair was gone, that was it. I was a soldier.
Once my hair was gone, I was off to war. Sentenced to death.
“Henry,” she said again, her voice choked.
I closed my eyes. “Just do it, Mother.”
So she did. And as my hair fell to the ground in blonde ringlets, all hope of escape fell with it.
I was going to war.

They train you well, before they send you off. Drill it into your mind. You don’t think, just shoot. You don’t run, just shoot. You don’t do anything before you shoot. Your gun is your life. In training, I got pretty handy with the gun, which was equally unexpected and terrifying.
So on this day, when I felt someone grasp the front of my jacket, I acted on instinct. I pulled the trigger and buried a bullet deep in his chest. And the man slid to the ground. He was dead in moments.
He was not a man, but a boy. Perhaps fifteen. His dark eyes were wide and his hands clumsily attempted to staunch the scarlet flow of death. I watched him die. I killed him.

What they don’t say about war is that we are all the same. That the men you are shooting
are just as human as you are. That they have a mother who screamed bloody murder when he left, and a sister who sits and sews on the windowsill day after wretched day, waiting for her older brother to come home so her mother will stop crying and her father will stop blaming himself.
They don’t say that there is a world of difference between shooting targets and shooting people.
They don’t say that there is no real victor in war. That everyone loses someone, something precious to them. For that is the nature of war, and of humans. We only consume. We only destroy.