This is War [ONC 2021] // Honourable Mention

Epilogue

Even seventy years after the war had ended, Kurt Schäfer remembered every detail of the battles he fought him. He remembered the manoeuvres, the strategies, everything. He remembered sitting in the dugout with Wilhelm and Johannes, listening to the rain on the mud outside. The days in training when Wilhelm would take everyone's money and then give it back just so he could win it back again.

More importantly, he remembered the men who died at his hands.

Tommy, who wandered too far from his own trench, the man that had broken Kurt when he fired that shot. The man who made him realise the cost of the war, both to life and to his own humanity. Seventy years might have passed, but Kurt remembered every detail of Tommy's face the day he died. The original spark of joy when he thought he made it home, the fear when he realised just where he had ended up.

And then there was Daniel. The man who had paused in the middle of an advance because he recognised Kurt as the man who had saved his life on the field, to whom he had given Tommy's identity disc and family photographs so they could be sent home to his family. Daniel had died because he had taken the time to speak to Kurt, to tell them that he owed him nothing, that he would put a bullet in him, but he didn't get the chance. Wilhelm had told Kurt that Daniel had died due to shrapnel from the grenade. It pierced his chest and killed him instantly.

Years after the war, Kurt tried to find his family. To offer his condolences for a loss that could have been avoided. Despite Wilhelm telling him it would be a bad idea, he wanted Daniel's family to know what sort of man his son was; the sort of man who would spare the life of a German who had killed one of his friends. It had been that ultimatum, that challenge for Kurt to either move or be killed that caused his death. Kurt saw them one day, visiting a military cemetery in Belgium on the ten-year anniversary of the war's end. He couldn't bring himself to talk to them.

Kurt was evacuated back to Germany for treatment on his leg and spent the rest of the war at home with his family. Marie would visit when she could, but she spent most of her time worrying for her brother. Two months before the war's end, Johannes was shot and killed in one of the last attempts to regain control of a war that was already lost. He had broken his promise to Marie and Kurt never forgave himself. Wilhelm returned home from war, but he wasn't the same boy who left all those years ago.

Then again, none of them were.

"Grandpa?" Kurt's grandson, Wolfie asked him one evening. Kurt sat in his rocking chair in front of a large window that looked out onto the family farm.

"Yes?" Kurt said.

"We're doing the Great War in school. Were you a soldier?"

"I was, but I was a young boy who rushed to war to try and get my hands on glory, but it cost me everything."

"Can you tell me about it?"

Kurt shifted in his chair. He had never spoken to anyone about his role in the war, he didn't want anyone to think any less of him for what he did and also what he didn't do. Many of the Great War veterans were forgotten when the second war came around, with their atrocities far worse than anything Kurt had done, but still, he never spoke. His younger brother, Hans, had taken part in those atrocities and still, Kurt told no one about his actions in the Great War.

His wife knew very little of his actions all those years ago, his children had asked but he couldn't bring himself to tell them the truth of what he had done. The lives he had taken for a war that needn't have taken place. Kurt kept it all to himself, buried deep within. Still, he was old, he had but a few years left on this earth and he wanted Wolfie to know the truth. The truth about the sort of man Kurt had been, the truth of war.

"You must know, I'm not proud of what I did. If I could do it all again, I would never put my name down. I would stay here, help your Great Grandfather on the farm and never go off to war," Kurt said.

"I won't tell anyone."

He smiled. "It all started on August fourth, nineteen-fourteen."

~~~

First Published - February 28th, 2021