The War That Stopped

• Sophie Ryan, Grade 5, Roseville College -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition

As bullets narrowly missed my blood stained shirt, I realised that war was not as I thought it was. It was just fighting for no reason. I didn’t want to be in it anymore. It had to stop. The air smelled of smoke, and planes flew overhead, dropping bombs on innocent people. The dead littered the ground, being carried away on stretchers.
My heart suddenly jolted as I looked down. A corpse was lying in front of me, blood spilling out. Ben. His pale face stared unblinkingly at mine, and his brown eyes were unseeing. The sadness hit me like a tsunami, and washed away all my other feelings. He was my best friend, all I had left, after my family was killed. I started slowly dragging him to the nurse to be buried.
But Major General Miles stopped me.
“Where do you think you’re going, boy?” he growled at me like an angry lion.
He saw Ben lugged over my shoulder and gently took him from me. His tone changed as he patted me on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry, boy.”
Ben’s head faced me, as I saw him being carried away for the last time.
I couldn’t even remember why we were fighting in the first place. It was just war. War was the thing that snatched away your feelings. It was the thing that pierced a knife through your heart. It was the figure of fear, pain and suffering. Some things are here for a reason.
War is not.
Anger. It filled me up like a balloon. I was angry at the world, angry at everything.
As I trudged back into my fighting position, my anger turned to sadness. I thought of our enemies. They were the reason for all our teammate’s death, and I would never forget that. But Instead of shooting, I watched them. One was hit. He fell to the ground like a ragdoll in slow motion, and no one noticed him.
No one cared.
Even though they were our enemies, they were human. Humans all have the same emotions, and I knew they were feeling the same way as me. It doesn't matter who you are, what you believe or what you look like. We are all equal, no matter what. They were the reason for our deaths, but we were the reason for theirs. We all needed to learn that. I needed to take action.
“STOP!”
I yelled that simple word and it echoed around like a flying bomb. But then all went quiet.
I took a deep breath and shouted out my heart.
“We all have lost people during this war. You, me, everybody. We may believe in different things, but that’s OK. We are all human. We are all equal. These people have died for nothing. We should not have War.”
War was the thing that caused the sadness, anger and pain. War was the thing that killed.
War was the thing that stopped.