The First Dawn Service

• Laura Charles, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2018

He watched in sorrowful despair through the puffing train's crystal-clear window as his family and loved ones shrunk into the distance and eventually disappeared; his heart was an empty blackness as the realisation of knowing he may never see them again sunk in. The daunting and deafening sound of silence was apparent throughout each carriage of the train, as each soldier undertook the same thought-process - these could be their last moments of safety and tranquillity. He yearned with all his heart that the mocking train journey would end momentarily. The longer he sat there, dreading the hours to come, the sicker he felt. He closed his eyes; blurred spirals of colour appeared in his eyelids, almost kaleidoscopic, and he drifted off into a trance, dreading the near future.
The soldier's stomach lurched as the boat swung violently, rocking its way towards the nearing land mass, knowing a fierce battle was awaiting him beyond the rocky shores. He had a hunched posture, but looked formal in his khaki-green camouflaged uniform, badges glinting in the light of the early morning sunrise. Despite the cold, crisp air of dawn, his face was laced with sweat from the anxious anticipation of knowing these might be his final hours. The only two audible sounds were the fighter's heavy breathing, and the distinctly loud thumping of his heart, which seemed as if it could be clearly heard from miles away.
The nervousness he felt could almost be smelt, but his face had a hint of determination. Though he was terrified beyond compare, he still felt proud. Proud to be sitting there, about to fight for his own country; whether he returned dead or alive. His face showed that he had suddenly snapped back to reality as the surrounding Servicemen and women began to bustle, he apprehensively rose.
He trudged upstairs to the deck, and headed over to take his place in a small, humble, wooden rowboat. He and another anxious looking fighter lowered themselves onto the splintered seats of the watercraft. His hands gripped the oars and he lifted them, sending the boat forwards with each row. Forwards, down, backwards, repeat. He continued the unvarying movement until him and his co-fighter, and the line of quietly moving rowboats approached the shore, perhaps a few metres away. The Digger rested the oars upon the edge of the vessel, and lifted his weight up and over, and into the shallow waters. He yanked the boat harder than necessary; he overestimated its weight, and pulled it onto the sludgy, wet sand. He listened intently to the soft noise of the wood on the seashore as each member of the unnerved army did the same, until each boat rested ashore in the lustreless light of dawn. The Servicemen, barely out of their teenage years, were scattered across the beach. They exchanged glances of trepidation with those surrounding them, and trudged through the scrub and up the hill to, for the first and perhaps last time, their battlefield.