"War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."
"How do you figure that Hawkeye?"
"Easy, Father. Tell me who goes to Hell?"
"Sinners, I believe."
"Exactly. There is no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them – little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everyone involved is an innocent bystander." – M.A.S.H
I talk to grandfathers friends a lot, talk to them about their experience in the war and what traumatic events they went through. They talk to me about bombing how they survived, what it felt like. They all say that it was as if time slowed down, the world stopped spinning and that everything moved ever so slowly, but it wasn't like that at all. So fast, all so fast. I had no chance to question the words she uttered to me, "Be Strong My Love". No chance to say goodbye to the women who raised me, as the roof came crushing down slaughtering her where she stood, and I had no chance to move my leg from out of the way of the falling rubble. It all happened so quickly, so, so quickly.
I screamed, louder than I ever screamed before. Not for help but to try and release the pain that was contained inside me. My vocal cords began to ache, as if I was pressing them against a grater but even then I still screamed. I screamed until I could scream no more, and when I could scream no more I cried. I cried for so long. For the first time in my life I felt a sadness and a loneliness which clawed its way into my heart with giant piercing claws. It felt as though someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and through it in a burning fire, the pain was unbelievable. My mind stopped working and my body lay motionless, I went quiet emotionally, mentally and physically. I didn't care about anything, I had nothing left to care about. Mother was gone, Father was gone, our home is gone, my leg is gone. I cried silently, trying to swallow back the agonizing pain of the loss of everything I held dearest to me.
I am cold, so cold. I've always liked the cold, I've always admired the comforting feeling of the cold slicing through my face as I run. This feeling was full of life, full of living; it reminded me that I was alive and breathing in the cold, hard air. This feeling was not that feeling. The cold slithered its way through the cracks in the rubble and found its way to me, embracing me into an icy hug that froze me slowly to my death. It was a lonely cold, a cold full of death and isolation. The air was thick, like soup in my mouth; it smelt and tasted smoggy and full of smoke, the taste reminded me of destruction, of pain. It was quiet, so quiet. A quiet that echoed the fact that there was no one there bar me to fill it. So much death, so much destruction, so much pain.
I begin to think of mother and my heart starts to ache as if it was shrivelling and trying to hide from the memory of her. As I close my eyes I began to reminisce in the memory of her, her amber eyes shone whenever she was happy, yet, they tore a hole through my heart when she was sad. But her eyes were brown, though it was brown that looked like prehistoric amber, with the stars and suns trapped just beneath the surface bursting to escape. Her dark hair was so long and delicate, like a baby rabbits fur, so gentle, so soft. She was extremely small and thin. Ever since Father went to war I knew I had to protect mother, take care of her. How I have disappointed both of them
I imagine my father, my father who was in the war fighting for us, I think. We don't have any radio, we don't know who's fighting the war or why, we didn't even know there was a war until General Erich Hartmann, head of the Nazi Luftwaffe, came and conscripted father into war. Leaving our family with no income, no money and no hope. I don't know whether we are fighting for world peace or world domination, we don't know if we are winning or losing, but the scariest part is that we don't know whether Father is dead or not. But he will come home, he has to come home. I will miss him just as I miss Mother but I am disappointed that I will not be able to see him return home from the war.
I feel my eyelids begin to weigh more than the world, the corner of my vision growing darker and a comforting darkness begins to consume, a darkness that frees me of my agonizing pain and I welcome it happily. The world goes black as I the blackness consumes me...
