One Last Round

• Tia Harlow, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2022

She stood at the door, where I went out. Just a boy with a dream to fight the war that would liberate my country, my home. That day was the last day I would see my mother, hug her, and tell her that I love her. My mother never wanted me to fight she begged me every day to stay, to take care of her and take over the family farm. She would say “Please Henry, you won’t survive.” But my hunger to be recognised and celebrated as an Anzac was pulling me like a magnetic force to that ship bound for Egypt and then Gallipoli.
“Fire!” The soldier to my left yelled. The rifle in my hands jolts my shoulder back sending a surge of agony down the left side of my body. As I reload my barrel simultaneous roars ring out, I look up to find the once white sand of Gallipoli had turned a deep crimson red that now soaked the fallen soldiers almost making them unrecognisable. The ocean that lapped against the shoreline pulls the lifeless bodies back to Australia. My mother was right I might not survive this. I grip the pocket on the left-hand side of my chest where the photo of my mother lay symbolising the barrier between my heart and a bullet. The one thing that will bring me home, prevent me too from being sent home in wooden box like my mates around me.
My mind drifts back to the day we marched down the street as the drill sergeant croaked at the top of his lungs “Left, left, left, right, left.” Fathers, mothers, and children parted like the red sea to let us through. The whole town of Bendigo lined the pathway to send us of war, to say their final goodbye. Then suddenly a cheer erupted, people were smiling and crying. Then my eyes caught hers, my mother and beside her my father. This was the first time that I had ever seen my father cry. His eyes were bloodshot with puffy bags underneath, he looked like he had been dreading this day, his son; his best mate sent to fight in a war that he might never return, to fight for the rest of his life. The sight in my mother’s face and the flash in her eye filled me with pride knowing that I would fight in my family’s name and bring honour to them.
Smoke and fire cover the sky as I soar through deep ravines using my camouflaged uniform to shield me from the enemy’s eye, dodging bullets, and bodies on my way to start the dreadful climb of Hill 60. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is the one thing keeping me alive and sending me home. Home to my family, to the farm where green pastures stretch for miles, to the peaceful mornings not filled with carnage and fear.