Men in battle… another person dead… another one gone… needless war… the battle ground ruined…pain… suffering… why… why… why…

Bang!

 

I wake up startled, only to realize that the loud noise was not from a gun, and, instead, the sound of Kai falling out of his bed to the left of me, again. I let the dusty scent of the room fill my nostrils to relieve me of the smell of copper from the nightmare, and assure me that this is real.

“That’s what you get for making so much noise when you sleep.” I joke at him, trying to use some humor to shake the horrors of what I had seen from my brain.

Kai jumped. His black hair bouncing on his head then falling to cover his eyes, but I could still tell that his dark brown eyes were widening. He probably didn’t realize that I was actually awake to witness his fall.

He groaned and looked over at me, from this angle it was easy to make out his sharp jawbone, prideful shoulders, and his permanently tanned skin

 “You know you could have some sympathy for me. I mean, I did just fall out of bed.”

It seems that every time this happens it’s all the same thing.

“Maybe I would have more sympathy for you if this was actually the first time that it happened.” I say, only for the sake of continuity.

 Next Jongdae is going to make some idiotic remark on how funny it was to see him fall, all while uncontrollably laughing… I never do know when it is that he wakes up, or maybe he just doesn’t sleep. Making his bed, the one across from me, useless.

3…2…1… and queue, “That was the funniest thing that happened here since Jonny got stuck in the well!” Well that one was better than when he said that it was funnier than the time I jumped ship and came up with a crab pinched to my bottom. It’s not like he’s wrong though, nothing exciting ever happens in this place; there is a war going on everywhere else in the world, except for here.

I’m not complaining though. That seems to be the least popular opinion in the barracks, I stand by it anyways. Everyone always calls me selfish for not wanting to fight, but I say they are all fools. Why would anyone want to go into a battlefield? All the pain, and screaming, and blood. I don’t understand why anybody would want to live through that. I guess that it makes sense though, they don’t have these thoughts that I do.

Everyone seems to be so sure that we will join the fight. Kai, he wants to fight for the glory. Jongdae, he wants to go to battle for the thrill. Me, I hope that it never comes, but every day the nightmare seems more real.

“Hey guys,” I ponder, “why exactly are you both so eager to go to war?”

Jongdae is the first to reply. “I think it’ll be fun, much more fun than the training we have to do here.”

I want to say that it probably won’t be very much fun watching everyone you care for die, but instead I reply in a joking tone, “But you won’t be able to get with any girls once we go off to battle.”

He laughs, and he really looks like a dinosaur when he laughs. His mouth unhinges like a snake, he gets wrinkles by his elfish, green eyes, and his light brown hair gets thrown backwards along with his head.

“True!” he says with a teasing grin on his face, “What about you Kai, why do you want to go to war?”

Kai takes longer to reply than Jongdae did, but eventually words begin to pour out of his mouth. “I want to go to fight for my country.” No you don’t Kai, you want to go to war to be seen as somebody.

“No really, Kai, why do you want to go to war?” Jongdae questions again. At least I know that I’m not the only one that thinks Kai is a liar.

“Ok, Ok, I really want to go to war to do something important. Maybe they would even write a book about me, and it’ll be huge hit.” Kai jokes, “I’ve always wanted to be remembered as a hero.” I sigh, if only he would understand that all of the most famous stories are tragedies, and almost all famous heroes ended up dead.

I hear a groan and look over to the corner of the room. Kyungsoo must have gotten woken up. I quickly lay back down in my bed. I can let Kai and Jongdae take the fall for waking up the sleeping bear.

“Would you all just SHUT UP!” Kyungsoo screams, “I don’t need to hit you, do I?”

Jongdae begins to cower in his bed, and Kai backed up to the edge corner of the room; almost like he was trying to put as much space between the small yet strong bear and himself. I myself am laying in my bed trying as hard as I can to not draw attention to myself and to keep it on the other two village idiots in the room.

“It was all Kai’s fault, Kyungsoo. H-h-he fell out of his bed again, and woke us up.” Jongdae says in a brittle voice. I totally understand, no one wants to be on the receiving end of Kyungsoo’s glare.

Kai trembles and croaks out in a tremulous voice, “It was not my fault, it… it was his fault for scaring me again!” He points a shaking hand at me. So much for him wanting to go out a hero, instead he’s going to go out like a coward shaking in the corner of a room.

 Kyungsoo looks at Kai incredulously, “How could it have been him, he’s asleep. Look.” I let out a brief snore to add to the ruse. There is no way I am going to take the blame for this.

“Everyone just go back to bed, I’m tired.” Kyungsoo commanded, and what Kyungsoo says goes.

 

 

Men in battle…

 

Everywhere I look all I can see are blurs of people. Their faces covered in black. Their blood smeared over their clothes. Their guns running out of ammo. The French are raining bullets from the sky, and I can only hope that they are only shooting at people on the opposite side of this war.

I have to move now, I am out in the open. It would only take moments for someone to spot me and shoot, and when they do, there would be no one to rescue me. Not Kai the ‘hero’ or Kyungsoo the overly protective bear, and I’m sure Jongdae no longer finds this fun. If he’s still alive.

I look around at all of the other soldiers, and no one looks like they want to be here fighting. Not us, nor the people on the other side. All that fills their faces are pain. I cannot be sure what they are pained over, but I am sure that is what they are feeling; only because I have the same emotion on my face.

All around me people are dying, and it doesn’t look like it will ever end.

I hear something from above me, and force myself to look up. It seemed like I was looking at the sun itself, but it was falling to the earth. Our commander was screaming at us to get out of the way. So I ran. It turns out that one of the planes got shot out of the sky is now falling at us. 1,000 feet… 500 feet… I can’t seem to force my legs to move fast enough… 

Bang!

 

I wake up to the sound of a door slamming against a wall, and someone in the distance telling people to wake up for another day of training.

The day passes by in a blur. I seem to be unable to focus on anything except for that dream I had, and before I knew it, it was already time for dinner. Probably something French. Gross. Why can’t I have been stationed somewhere else, like Italy, I’m sure that they have good food there.

I walk into the canteen with Kai, and we stop. It seems that I’m not the only who doesn’t to eat snails. We both start laughing at the scene in front of us.

Jongdae is standing there covered in food. He turns to look at us making some of snail in his hair fling at Kyungsoo. Only making Kai and I laugh harder.

“Kai,” I say, “it seems that we have made them angry, I think that we had better run…” but we were too late, and by the time we had begun to move the monsters were already on our tails.

Kyungsoo jumped at me.

I could see the scowl on his face, and his owl like eyes burn in fury. Oh no, I’m done for.        

 

 

Another person dead…

 

I look around me and see people. If I can really call them that. Now it seems that all they are, are shells of their former selves.

Left and right people are falling down dead. Everything is so red, I can no longer tell who is who. Enemy or friend. Victim or villain. Who decides which side is the villain. Maybe it is actually us, we are the ones that jumped into this battle.

The man to my left has eyes that look as though they are sinking into his brain. It takes me a minute to realize that it is actually Kyungsoo. His usually large eyes look so small now, and his pump limps now split and scabby.

He fires another round, then reaches down to the cross hanging on his neck. I then look at where he has fired. Maybe he was praying for the poor soul that he just killed. Maybe he was asking for forgiveness for his sins.

I don’t have enough time to be relieved that he is still alive because then we both hear a crack above us. We look up simultaneously and realize that a very large branch on the tree has just broken off of it.

Bang!

 

The nurse beside my bed is bent down trying to pick up the stuff she spilt. Wait. Nurse? What happened to me? Where am I? Ok I need to calm down, I’m obviously in the infirmary. The creepily white walls make that more than clear.

“Oh good! You’re finally awake!” The nurse squeals, drawing my attention back to her. She looks kind of familiar.

“Why am I here?”

“Don’t you remember sweaty?” I shiver at that word. “You got knocked out by Kyungsoo again.”

Oh well that makes sense. He never can control himself. He also has serious issues with strength... and anger.

“Hey Kyungsoo! You’re awake!” Jongdae says as he enters the room, “How are you doing?”

I look at him like he’s stupid, nothing new there. “Oh you know, I’m doing fine. It’s not like I just got run over by a vicious Kyungsoo on attack.”

Jongdae looks stumped. Also nothing new there. There is never anything new there when it comes to Jongdae.

“Jongdae, how could you just come in here and totally ignore me like that?” The nurse pouts at him.

“I needed to make sure my friend was ok, honey.” He says while kissing her cheek, probably rolling his eyes while he was at it.

I take back my previous statement. That is definitely something new.

After coughing awkwardly I tell them that I’m going to go back to our room. I don’t think they heard me, and frankly I don’t really care.

As I walk into our room Kyungsoo rushes up to me. I unconsciously take a step back and immediately feel bad after Kyungsoo looks down, sad.

“Hey, man, I’m really sorry about that.” He says to me remorsefully.

“It’s ok Kyungsoo. I’m fine, so we should just put it all behind us and go to bed.” I reply.

“Ok, if that’s what you want, then let’s go to bed.”

“Ok.”

 

 

Another one gone…

 

I take a shot.

I probably shouldn’t be this relieved that I didn’t hit anyone, but I am. I am merely evading the inevitable. I will soon end up either killing someone, or being killed.

At this point I am no longer sure which I would prefer: an immediate end that would relieve me of my suffering yet prevent me from having a future and possibly a family, or kill someone and live forever with the guilt of taking another man’s life and have that guilt slowly eat me out from the inside and make me a shell of my former self.

I take another shot.

This time I end up hitting someone.

Another one gone.

I suppose that if I survive this battle I can get therapy. Maybe that will help. Probably not, I’ve trained to take this city, but not to go back to my own.

Someone is aiming at me.

Bang!

 

Why am I on the floor? Why is Kai standing over me? What is going on?

“Well you’re on the floor because Kai pushed you off of your bed, he’s standing over you to see if you’re ok, and we are all getting ready for training.” Jongdae states. It seems that I said that out loud, woops.

I wonder what it is that we will be doing for training today. Other than the usual things that we do.

So it turns out that we are spending the day practicing shooting our guns, what a waste of bullets. The commander is screaming at everyone to hurry up and get into position so we can begin. We run outside and I scan the shooting grounds. It had targets lined up in a row a ways away from these dirt mounds that we will probably be standing behind. To the left of the mounds there are tables set up with rifles and ammo.

I line up in front of one of the targets with Kai on my right, and Jongdae on my left. Kyungsoo is… probably off shooting some poor soul in the leg or something.

I hear Kai scream; looks like he was Kyungsoo’s first target. I look over at him and see him holding his foot while rolling on the ground.

Suddenly my vision goes blurry.

 

 

Needless war…

 

The man right in front of me in line fell, either injured or dead. In this place there really isn’t much of difference between the two anyways.

My shoulder is still killing me, but I know that if I stop moving I’m an easy target for the enemy. The gun feels heavy in my hands, and the tourniquet on my arm makes it feel even heavier. 9 pounds feel like 100.

Jongdae rushes up to me. “You were right, this place, it’s terrible.” Why did it have to come to such bad circumstances for him to realize this? “I wish we could go back, I wish we wouldn’t have to deal with this pointless bloodshed.”

“At least your still alive, Jongdae.” I say as I look back at the dead man now behind me. He isn’t even recognizable anymore. His clothing is torn, his face covered in a gruesome mix of dirt, blood, gun powder. I probably look about the same. What makes him different is the pool of surrounding his head and leaking into cracks in the pavement below.

Why did he really have to die? He probably had friends, a family, maybe even a lover at some point in time. Because of this war, though, he will never get to see them. Because of this war, none of the families of these fallen warriors will get to see them again.

“Do you know how either of the others are faring at the moment?” I ask Jongdae, distracting him from the corpse he was staring at. Maybe they knew each other, or were even close friends.

“Last time I saw Kyungsoo he looked fine, but I haven’t seem Kai anywhere. It’s him I’m the most worried about.” I really don’t know if he is alive right now, and I can only hope that he is alive at the moment. Being a few years younger than me has always given me a protective instinct towards him. “I suppose the only thing that we can do is pray we all make it out of this alive.”

We begin to run again. Jongdae a few feet ahead of me, he’s always been faster than me. I look ahead and see a mangled cadaver in front of him. I reach out towards Jongdae to try and stop him but he’s already tripped over it, and began reaching for me to try and catch himself. It only results in me falling over as well.

Bang!

 

Jongdae is standing in front of me with his hands out stretched in clapping formation.

“Hey man, are you ok? You were zoning out pretty badly right there.” He asks me.

I look at Kai to see if he’s ok. The idiot is standing there rubbing the back of his head with a goofy smile on his face, and a small bandage on his foot. I raise my eyebrows at him.

“Well…”

“This idiot pointed his gun at his foot, and decided that it would be a really fun idea to try and shoot his foot off. The poor thing missed though and only took off his pinky toe.” Jongdae says while cutting Kai off.

I look back at Kai. “Idiot.” I deadpan. “How can you be that stupid? Actually, don’t answer that question, I already know the answer. You must have hit your head and lost every single brain cell you have when you fall out of bed at night. Isn’t that right?”

Kai lowers his head. “I know, I know, I shouldn’t have been aiming the gun at myself in any way at all, it was stupid, and now I have to walk around without a pinky toe for the rest of my life.”

Kyungsoo then comes up to us with pills for Kai, and to tell us that it is time for lunch.

 

 

The battle ground ruined…

 

Jongdae pushes me off him and stands up. Waves of pain are rushing across my body from where I landed, and the bullet wound in my shoulder begins throbbing again.

We both look at the body lying on the ground. Its arms are at odd angles, and it is missing half of its left leg, and all of its right. Dried blood is clotting its wounds, its pants have been shredded, and bugs have already begun feasting on its skin. Its helmet is sitting a few feet away, and it looks like it has been trampled into the dirt, no one probably cares anyways when they could be next.

It’s not the only corpse laying around either. There are bodies everywhere, from our side and from theirs. Their smell is being to creep into my nose, making me gag. I have never smelt something as bad as the smell of decaying bodies.

The buildings on each side of the road have been set on fire, the smoke is clouding the sky and turning black, making the area seem even darker and gloomier. Soon there may not even be a city left to take back.

There are chunks of rocks littering the side of the road from the buildings that have begun to crumble. This place is beginning to look haunted, and due to all of the people that have died, it wouldn’t surprise me.

I hear crack next to us. Part of the roof on the building next to us is beginning to crack. Soon it will fall and crush everyone in its way. I scream for the people to get out of the way, but do to all of the gunfire I doubt that any of them heard me.

Bang!

 

I slam the door to our bunk room open.

“Ahh that was a satisfying lunch.” Kyungsoo exclaims.

We both stop short at the mess in front of us. There are clothes all over the floor, all the drawers have been ripped open, and my perfectly made bed has been horrifically unmade, with its white sheets hanging off of it. In fact, everybody’s bed are a mess at the moment. I am sure that it is not how we left it at all. Kyungsoo and I made sure of it.

I walk further into the room to find the perpetrator. Not at all surprised that it was Kai, seeing as he was the only one to leave the mess hall early.

He looks panicked for some reason. His clothes in disarray: shirt wrinkled and hanging off of his shoulders, breathing heavily, his lips dry and cracked from breathing with them too much, and the hair that you see from under… eww… Jongdae’s underwear is sticking in every direction.

Kyungsoo huffs, drawing both Kai’s and my attention, and looking over only results in Kai trying to hide under his bed for safety. Kyungsoo looks completely livid. His eyes are turning red, his hands are clenched into fists at his sides, his jaw in a locked position, in chubby cheeks are turning red with fury. If he gets any madder I’m sure that it will result in smoke pouring out of his ears.

 “What. Did. You. Do. To. My. Perfectly. Clean. Room.” Kyungsoo whispers, enunciating every syllable with a step closer to Kai. He is probably too mad to even scream, which does make sense considering that he is the one that usually tidies up the space. I almost feel bad for Kai, almost.

“Well I, then umm, well the thing is, hehe,” Kai can hardly speak right now, stuttering over almost every word he says. This seems to do nothing but anger Kyungsoo even more.

“Spit it out, Kai. I’m not waiting all day.” Kyungsoo is seething with anger by now.

Kai is still hiding under the bed.

It’s probably not helping his case in the slightest.

“I lost the photo.” Kai finally manages to say.

“What photo?” I add, a little bit annoyed that someone was on my bed. Nobody is supposed to touch my bed.

“The one of my family.” He pouts at me, incredibly similar to that of a baby.

“You mean the one poking out of your back pocket.” Kyungsoo says, looking calmer even though his eye is still twitching.

Kai reaches behind him and grabs the photo. “Oh, thanks Kyungsoo.” He says as he dashing out of the room and down the hall.

Kyungsoo follows behind him, and I can hear the shouting getting quieter.

I look back at my bed and sigh. “Stupid Kai, now I’m going to have to disinfect my sheets to get your germs out of them.” I mutter.

Instead of fixing my bed I just lay down on it, exhausted from all of the day’s events. Soon I drift of to sleep, lulled by the sound of people running around outside and boots stomping in the hall.

 

 

Pain…

 

The people under the building have got to be dead, the crunch of their bones under the building making that obvious. At least they died a quick dead. That is more than I can say about others in this dreaded city of Cantigny.

Jongdae and I hurry back into our line and continue to press forward. Pushing the enemy back.

My entire body is throbbing, and the sound of it is growing louder in my ears, almost drowning the rest of the war out.

A nearby gunshot brings me back to this world, as I focus on Jongdae’s body falling down in front of me.

I rush up to him to inspect the damage, and my body deflates at what I see. I know that I need to keep moving, but the view in front of me is rendering my limbs useless.

It almost looks as if he is sleeping, and will soon wake up telling another horrible joke.

His face is still covered in soot and dirt and gunpowder, but for the first time since this battle began, he actually looks calm. The view almost makes me want to cry.

Then I notice his shirt slowly being covered in blood, and I know that I will never hear his obnoxious laughter again. I would check his pulse to confirm his passing, but the reassurance that he is dead would ruin me.

I want to stay here and cry over his body, but someone grabs my arms and pulls me away. I begin to struggle, wanting to somehow save my best friend.

“You need to keep moving or I might lose you too.” The person says to me in a broken voice.

I finally pull my eyes away from my best friend, and look at the person who dragged me away. It’s Kai. A much older looking Kai. With tear stains running down his cheeks, washing the grime away. I sometimes forget how young he really is.

Then a huge pain in my leg makes me fall, pulling Kai down with me.

Bang!

 

The sound of me falling and dropping all of my food on myself rings all though-out the room.

All of my blood begins rushing to my cheeks out of embarrassment. Everyone is looking at me. They need to stop.

I quickly push my plate off me, it begins to roll across the floor, drawing even more attention.

I try to hide my face from the others view and stand up, but the moment I put weight on my left leg, it feels like there is fire burning my ankle making me collapse again.

I can no longer feel everyone’s eyes on me, now all my being is focusing on the burn I feel on the side of my foot. 

I can faintly hear Jongdae and Kyungsoo running over to me.

“Man you look terrible.” Jongdae quips.

I open my eyes to look at them. The first thing I see is Kyungsoo smacking Jongdae on the side of the head while saying, “Of course he does, idiot, he’s hurt.” Jongdae begins to open his mouth but immediately closes it after receiving a glare from Kyungsoo.

I then notice someone trying to pick me up from the backside, probably Kai. I begin to help him by pushing myself up with my hands and putting my weight on my right. Making sure to avoid any pressure on my left leg.

We begin hobbling to the infirmary, Kai practically carrying me at this point.

By the time we get there, there are black spots in my vision, and I am feeling really dizzy. When Kai lays me down on the bed, I’ve already passed out.

 

 

Suffering…

 

My ears are beginning to focus on different things. I can now hear the sounds of bullets landing in their target. I don’t want to think about what the target was though.

What I find the most odd is that the sounds of battle are the only thing I hear. Growing up on a farm in America, I grew used to the sounds of nature: cows grazing in the green pastures, birds singing in the trees, even the crickets and cicadas chirping in the distance. Here, though, there areonly the sounds of destruction.

Suddenly there is a loud scream drawing me out of my thoughts. It also reminds me of the pain in my legs. Suddenly the only thing I can hear are other peoples screams and shouts. Orders being called, whistles blowing, fire crackling, people screaming in pain, others screaming in anger or frustration. The sounds are beginning to all blur into one sound, the sound of people suffering.

Then I hear Kai screaming, no, shouting, but I can’t understand what it is he’s saying. A loud buzzing in my ears drowning everybody else out.

His head then snaps itself to the left and his mouth opens wider than I have ever seen it before. I manage to turn my head in that direction and wish that I hadn’t.

What I see is a man, a tired looking man, standing over the fallen body of Kyungsoo.

Kai collapses over my body and begins to sob into my chest, my own blood mixing with his tears. I feel too numb at the moment to feel anything, though.

The man begins to move in our direction. I try to tell Kai to get up and run, but my voice is refusing to work for me, and all that comes out is a choked sob.

He then aims his gun in our direction and Kai goes limp. I notice his blood dripping down the side of his head. His breathing is coming in shallower, and after a few seconds it has stopped completely. I want tears to run down my face, only so I can finally relieve the stress of my best friends dying. I think I cried all of them out by now.

I can only lay there, staring at the man who has just killed two of my best friends, and maybe even all three of them, I don’t know.

He continues walking over to me, then, three feet away, he stops.

I look him in the eyes and see tears running down his cheeks. It must be hard, killing so many people. I would be crying if I were in his place too.

He begin to speak, but I still can’t hear what he is saying. If I could, I probably wouldn’t understand what he saying, but his remorseful face says it all. I then nod at him, showing forgiveness for what he has done. It is the least I could do to relieve his stress, he was probably in the same position I was when this started. I look at the enemy, no, not enemy, this person, and nod. I hope he gets the message.

I then look away, taking what will probably one of my last looks at this world.  

Men in battle… but so, so many less than when it began. Another person dead… I can no longer tell whether it a friend or a foe. Another one gone… does it matter, in the end it is still another life wasted. Needless war… what are we fighting for again? The battle ground ruined… what will all of this blood will do to the environment? Pain… so much screaming… suffering… it’s everywhere… why… am I dreaming… why… I really hope so… why… this time when he shoots, I suppose I won’t get back up…

Bang!