A Moment With You.

11

April 1945, Germany. Present day.

Devil.

Odysseus, the devil, the darkness. It didn't matter who I compared myself to.  In the war that transpired, I had vilified myself, turned into something... Worse. A brooding, hurting, despicable man who had shed the blood of innocents. Ten years had passed since we were last in England. In that long time, what had seemingly been an innocent time of our lives -- turned into a much more sinister and dark era. We were shipped off to war on the front lines. Throughout it all, we began stealing weapons, and as things were, I too had come to the realization that a normal life simply would not do it for me. Neither would it do, to be a soldier. We went from honorable soldiers to men who did anything and everything to survive, even if it went against protocol and order. I could not, and would not, live under the ordinary grace of what was. No matter how much I missed her, no matter how much I craved to see our son, our future together. The twist towards the darkness. Heh, well,  it all began with the trouble in 1915, right before New Year's. A moment I never told anyone about. We celebrated, of course; merry and jolly altogether. However, even then, something stirred in us all. Elizabeth didn't know at first; clueless and abandoned in the shadow over what we were doing. Though, slowly, as time passed, she caught on. There were days when I would come back home, hands roughed up, sometimes my face bloodied and clothes ruffled in ways that hinted at combat. We were killing soldiers, enemy spies and scouts. I had to eventually tell her the truth; I had given in to the allure of doing something illegal. Disobeying orders to get revenge on the men we lost. I didn't care how far it would be taken. Death was a well-deserved punishment for the krauts. The enticement of still living the same life we lived as soldiers. Nobody, not a single one of us, came zback from France. Not alive on the inside, anyway. Every single man who came back from war -- they had endured shellshock and trauma. At times, we'd find ourselves lost amidst a fog; lost dead in the water without anyone to guide us back -- remembering only the whispers and faint -- but harrowing -- voices of those we've killed or lost. The tunnelers were worse off than us; rushed by the Germans during the process as they died or killed someone in the suffocating smallness of a deadly tunnel beneath the earth of a no-man's-land. We were the last remnants of the forty eight battalion, the mixed 48th.  For a whole seven years, throughout every illegal action and otherwise harmful thing: Elizabeth remained steadfast by my side. Not knowing that I did many cruel and possibly inhumane things behind her back. For what, I don't know, not really. But for seven years, I lied and did things I wasn't proud of. Despite it all, she still, by some prosperity of hope, remained faithful and waited all those years regardless of anything, for me to open up. Did I? No, not really. I regret not telling her the truth. We got to stay for a while in the peaceful countryside of France, we got to travel to Monaco, and even lived in England. Yet, even then, we were sent back into war several years later. I'm glad, for what it matters, that I got to enjoy a peaceful and loving life with someone so forgiving. A brightness in a world that's nothing but a twisted umbra of complete cruelty. She was, or is, still the only shining star of my life. So many secrets, so many things left unsaid. I already had my first kill back in 1915 during the bombardment of Paris, overhead bombs and a rush of the german infantry as well as air force.  But from there on out, I only ever killed more. Hate was beginning to become a larger aspect of it all. The grim reality was that the Germans used children as their go-to. Mere young ones at the age of thirteen to sixteen. Gun in hand. Grenades. Suicide bombings. Didn't matter what it was, it'd only get worse, and worse. I, too, was affected by it, and eventually most of us were going insane. Yet I never once spoke of it. Instead, Elizabeth saw the pain in my eyes during all of those years. Maybe she didn't know the cruelty that we accomplished. The fact that I, as gentle as I could be, had the blood of German soldiers on my own hands. It always haunted me, the fact that I lived two lives but never said anything. Instead, I worked hard when I could; labouring against all measures for a life far more normal than what we ever seemed to reveal. We succeeded, in some aspects. Married, children, normal jobs. In the end, though, we were nothing short of murderers. People who, despite being dismissed from the army, continued to do what we thought was 'Rightful' towards the army, using it as an excuse to take out the anger we had kept inside ourselves for so long. Maybe I am indeed a cruel man, one who lied and betrayed the trust of the only woman I've ever loved. Yet, she felt what we had experienced, how I was processing it, remembering.