Warzone {Dunkirk H.S.}

2: No Hope

TOMMY

Tommy Pierce sat on the grey-white sand of the hellish beach, the salty air drying his lips out and hurting his eyes as he stared blankly at the gloomy, looming sky. His everything hurt. His legs, his chest, his heart. His head throbbed so much that he was not sure if he would be able to even think clearly. The madness of the situation was slowly eating away at him, mauling at his insides like a killer bacteria. Ever since the first bomb hit, he had become so shell-shocked that he did not even have the energy to cry or even try to save others, he hardly had it in him to speak. All he would do whenever he would hear the all-too-familiar, gut-wrenching whistle of an approaching bomb, was curse the Gods and get down. It was all he could do. All the men around him were the same. He felt like a number, nothing more than another terrified man in uniform surrounded by a million faceless copies of himself, a million young men who like him, just wanted to go home.

He just wanted to go home. He missed sleeping well, he missed comfortable, warm clothes, he missed eating good, hearty meals instead of scavenging for hard rations. He missed coming home everyday to the smiling face of his darling sister, Gwen. He missed feeling like he was safe.

In his life, he had never felt more alone or isolated - despite the fact that he was surrounded by more people than he ever had been. They had just fought in a war but now each man was stuck with a war waging on inside their own minds.  And it seemed like the only way that war would be silenced, was with death. He almost envied the dead men who lay on the ocean floor and who were always being carried away and buried in shallow graves, they did not have to live through the monstrous reality the ones who survived did.

Tommy let himself fall back onto the uncomfortable, hard sand, and closed his eyes, feeling the wetness of an involuntary tear slip down the side of his left cheek. He did not bother to wipe away the ones that followed after that. He had waited for days for the ships to come, and they did, but they always were destroyed, along with the men who tried to board them. He had witnessed so much turmoil, death, destruction, and he was sick of it.

He thought of the letter he wrote to Gwen. He had been in a better place of mind when he wrote it, if he were to write another one to her he would probably send his will rather than trying to not worry her. He hoped she understood how desperate he was in the letter, of course he could not ask her to do anything but he knew she would not sit back and watch the chaos. He wondered if she was okay, he imagined her at home, warm and safe in her bed, and everything looked a little less bad. As long as she and the others he loved were safe and okay, he would live. But never in his life had he felt so lost, so scared, so mortal, so hopeless.

Despite the fact that he had told Gwen to stay hopeful and that he would find his way back to her, he was not sure if he himself could. He was choking on the lies he had been feeding himself, all of the you will be okay's. It was pointless. He felt stupid for how he had acted days earlier, remembering how he had been trying to be optimistic on the battlefield, encouraging and looking out for the soldiers he had bonded with, telling them good things instead of succumbing to their misery, because Gwen had written him in a letter and told him that that's what he should do, and he had always thought whatever she said or did would fix everything. He wished that he had enough strength to genuinely believe it still. But his positivity had faded - in fact it was pure insanity that he'd tried to look on the bright side and look for hope in a place so devoid of any traces of it.

Tommy's eyes shot open as he suddenly heard the dreadful sound. His heart rate quickened again, and the burning fear shot through his muscles and his mind, tensing him up and making him alert. The little adrenaline rushes he got when the air strikes came always left him flat and he hated it. He hated every second of trying to survive. He almost wished he did not have anything to live for, because then he would have welcomed the cold kiss of death.