A War Story

• Lily Douglass, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2018

As the dirt rains down on me and the distant screams of both enemies and allies ring in my ears, I charge down the trenches. The once blue sky has long since disappeared behind the plumes of smoke and clouds of rain. Oh the rain. It made the dirt turn to mud. Such horrible mud that it clings to your boots, threatening to rip them right off of your feet. It has been 2 months since we dug the trenches and no ally nor enemy has moved so much as an inch. Bodies of both dead and injured litter the sides of the trenches, their screams of pain are barely heard over the constant gunfire. Men that surround me are so young, they know no other life than the life of war. Families and loved ones are left behind and for what? The thousands of dead bodies lost never to return home? A man falls to the ground with a heavy thump. Another one dead. We have lost count of the dead. His vacant eyes stare at the sky, never to see anything again. No, war was not worth this death. This hatred. Adjusting my blood and mud splattered uniform, I headed toward the front line. With my rifle in hand I loaded in my ammo and found a gap in our lines. Positioning myself, I aimed toward the enemy. Shot after shot I fired into the enemy line, the motions like a dance we had become so familiar with. I took a glance toward my fellow comrades. Each had their own story that we had all come to know after the months on the battlefield. Richard was forced into the army by his father. Patrick has a wife and two kids back at home, yet still volunteered to join the army. Sam thought that the war would be fun, but wasn’t prepared for the horrors he has seen. Timothy said he was two years older than he is so he could get into the army. These men who were once strangers have become my friends, my comrades. Glancing back towards the enemy lines, I was too late to react to the bullet that buried into my flesh. As I exhaled my last breathe, my last thoughts were of home and the family I would never see again.