The two brothers had been lucky to serve in the same regiment. When they reached the front, both young men were eager to help their country in any way they could. However, William, the younger of the two, lost his enthusiasm during the first battle. He continued his service, but with reluctance. He had been a talkative, immature smart-aleck, but life in the trenches had changed all that. The blood and slaughter of combat was not the glorious war he’d envisioned before joining the army. John had always been the brave one. It seemed that he had known exactly what he was getting himself into. He came alive with the presence of danger. In the heat of the fight, he wasn’t still for a moment. Fear was not an option for him.
In one particular battle, John was stationed at a .50-caliber machine gun. William was nearby with his Springfield riffle. Another man stood below John, constantly feeding belts of bullets into the gun. As the spent rasps came streaming out the other side of his gun, John shouted “Victory before Death!” over the pounding bang of the weapon. He said it again and again as he sent out thousands of bullets in hopes of penetrating the advancing lines of the enemy. He cursed loudly as an enemy bullet grazed across the top of his shoulder. Jumping down from the gun, he hauled another belt out of a box and yelled to his gunman, “Greg, we’ve got to push these devils back! Don’t let me down!” He roughly shoved the belt at the man and resumed his gunning stance, grunting at the inconvenience of the fresh bullet wound. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and spit on the ground with another curse. His jaw was set in a firm line as he continued his attack.
One night, John and William sat drinking together. Resting his forehead on the back of his hand, John looked over at his brother and reflected aloud in a quiet voice. “You know, it seems that for every friend I make, another is killed. It’s hard on lasting relationships when the guy you met and shared a cigarette with ends up dead in some foxhole the next day.”
William looked up from his bottle. He’d had a bit more to drink than his older brother, and responded with an irreverent giggle. “Death is the only friend a soldier needs.”
“Don’t you get it?” John asked firmly as he smacked William on the side of his head. “Maybe you’re too drunk to understand,” he finished, settling back down with his own bottle.
“No, I get it,” William said, a little flushed. “You’re the one that’s stupid enough to think that we’re actually fighting for a cause. What’s really going on is they shipped us out here to die in a ‘civilized manner,’” he spat. “Those cowards in Washington sit around a table all day and think up reasons to go to war. They wouldn’t be so anxious to ship us all out here if they had to join the army.” His speech was slurred.
“At least you’re still here,” John commented, repressing his fury, hoping to distract William from his morbid theorizing. “We can’t let this war get the better of us.”
“John, it already has. Take a look around you! Hell! Our one purpose for being here is to kill them before they kill us. You’re the one that doesn’t get it. I’m sick of this old-fashioned patriotism you seem to be so fond of.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Turning back to his drink, John ended the conversation.
Two weeks later during a fierce battle, William was reloading his rifle when he heard a sharp crunch as a chunk of flying shrapnel crushed his brother’s pelvis nearby. William stood frozen at the sight, his brother lying on his back, blood welling form the jagged hole in his hip. He fell to his knees at John’s side just in time to hear him gasp out, “Victory!” between short, wheezing gulps of air. He ground his teeth together, trying to ignore the pain. William clasped John’s hand and winced at the forceful grip. John cried out once more.
“… ‘s only pain…” were the barely audible words uttered from his brother’s lips through clenched teeth. The corners of his eyes drew into tight, hard lines. He barred his teeth and gasped trying to repress a scream that threatened to escape into the thick, hot air of the battle. Then, just as though the shrapnel had never struck him, John opened his eyes and focused on a point above William’s head, opening his mouth as if to speak, but he let out a long, shuddering breath of air instead. His spirit seemed to go with that sigh. His eyes clouded over with death. William just stared, unable to tear his gaze away from his brother’s face. The muscles beneath John’s skin had finally relaxed. Despite the dirt that covered his features, it seemed that the corners of his mouth were turned up in a slight smile. John seemed to embrace dying in the war like he had embraced fighting it. William couldn’t understand why.
He recalled a conversation he had once had with his brother about death—before these hostilities even began. John’s words came back; I want to live to be ninety-five and die in my sleep. And now he was dead—only twenty-two. John’s dream was to get married and have four kids. William didn’t even know where he was going in life. He hadn’t thought beyond the war. Fate plays roulette with the mortality of men, and John lost the game.
Though John was dead, blood still oozed from the hole made by the shrapnel. His entrails hung out of his lower stomach in an undignified manner. For a brief moment, William thought that he should put the intestines back where they belonged out of respect for his brother. Shaking away that thought, he suddenly couldn’t figure out why he was so concerned with dignity in the middle of an attack. With intense anger and sudden hatred rising in his chest, William stood and yelled, “Go to Hell you bastards!” toward the enemy. He was answered by an onslaught of bullets and was forced to throw himself flat on the muddy ground on top of his brother’s blood-soaked, sodden body.
William managed to live through that battle, though it was all a blur. He had automatically loaded his gun, aimed at the enemy lines, and fired until there was no more ammunition. He reached over every now and then to take some bullets from the pocket of the dead man lying next to him and mechanically fired over and over again. When it was finished and the enemy was running away defeated, he merely sank into the mud next to his brother’s corpse. His tears mixed with the dirty residue on his face. Another soldier finally convinced William that there was nothing he could do or change by sitting around, crying for his dead brother. Remorsefully, William removed one of John’s bloodied tags and placed it in his pocket. Pressing his hand against John’s forehead, he said a silent prayer, wishing his brother a safe journey to wherever he went in the afterworld. IN a final farewell, he bent and kissed his brother’s cold cheek, and left him.
*****
William couldn’t remember what the sun looked like. He couldn’t even remember looking at it since the war began. He coughed when he inhaled a big of smoke and hoped it wasn’t tainted with poisonous gas or some other lethal substance. The sky hung like a black fog ready to envelop the rotting corpses that dotted the barren wasteland beneath it. Each time an explosion sounded in the distance, the thick clouds seemed to roll in protest. He watched as they blended from one hideous image to another. A cloud contorted into a form that reminded William of a man dying in a tangle of barbed wire, a bullet ventilating his lung.
His attention was distracted as one of his commanders hobbled down the trench towards him, trying to muffle his cough.
“William,” the officer said in greeting.
“Smith,” he responded informally, clamping his teeth down, trying to keep them from chattering together.
Smith joined him on the hard ground, and winced as the frost cut through the seat of his pants. AT least they didn’t have to slog through the mud. William almost subconsciously wiggled his toes inside his boots and rolled his angles to keep his feet from falling asleep. He’d heard about the effects of frostbite and didn’t cherish the thought of losing his extremities. He looked down the trench and saw a younger man shaking his canteen upside down and cursing quietly. “It’ll be frozen solid, boy,” William commented, causing the new recruit to stop his antics abruptly. Turning to look the boy in the face, William advised, “Keep your canteen inside your shirt so it won’t freeze.”
“Uh… thanks,” the young man responded.
William turned away from the boy and focused on the sky above the trench once more. Orders were to wait. The heat of battle was to the north, but borders still needed to be protected. There was no telling what schemes and diversions those devils were coming up with. “It sounds like they’re attacking in the north again,” he commented tensely, feeling the muscles in his neck convulse involuntarily. He had lived with an unstoppable anxiety since he entered the war.
“Yeah,” Smith acknowledged. “We’d better get some rest before it comes our way.” But both men knew there was no way to sleep. Insomnia caused by fear, pain, the stench, nightmares, or worse, was their constant companion.
“When do you think the war will end?” William asked.
“You’ve asked me that before,” Smith said as he pulled a stale biscuit out of his pack.
“I know, but you’ve never given me a straight answer.”
He sighed. “I don’t know.”
William let his head fall back against the dirt wall. “It’s been two years since I’ve seen my family.”
“Three for me. My wife must think I’m dead. Mail hasn’t been coming or going from here for three months.”
“I bet our families are writing to us all the time. The only problem is we’re too damn close to the front for any mail to make it through,” William stated with contempt. “I wonder if my parents even know what happened to John,” he said grimly.
William went on coldly. “My mother thought the war would make me a man. Sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever get to see what I’ve become as a result of this war. If I’ve got to watch my friends die, and kill a bunch of those bastards out there to be a man, I want none of it.” He paused. “I’m glad she didn’t know I’d end up in this Hell-hole,” he spat bitterly.
“You’ll get home alright. Your mother will be proud of the man you’ve become,” Smith said in a fatherly tone. He shifted his position slightly, uncomfortable at the turn of conversation. “I’ve got three boys at home,” Smith said slightly changing the subject. “One of ‘em is seventeen. I suppose he’ll be joining up pretty soon.” He wearily drew a worn photograph from his goat pocket and gazed at it in silence.
“May I?”
Smith nodded, and handed him the picture.
William looked down at the family. Smith’s wife had long golden hair, and wore a bright spring dress. Smith’s arm was around her shoulders, and she had reached up to clasp his hand with hers. His other hand was buried in the mass of hair on his youngest son’s head. The young boy had one finger laced through his father’s belt-loop, while the other hand was hidden behind him. The boy had his head cocked slightly downward, but he looked up through his shaggy mop of hair with bright blue eyes. The two older boys had the same blond mops and they made an exuberant display of muscles that weren’t quite there yet.
William looked over and examined Smith now. Lines creased his forehead, and his mouth hung in a perpetual frown. His shoulders slumped with the weight of command and his eyes were dulled with the fierce reality of war. There was nothing left of the pride William had seen in the picture. Returning Smith’s photograph, William withdrew one of his own. He removed the small picture from a little tin box. He softly fingered the dirty, tattered corners while he moved his eyes over the features of his loved ones: his parents, his older brother John, and his little sister Emma.
Smith was looking over his shoulder, so he handed him the picture.
William let his head fall back again and started at the dark, clouded sky. A multitude of memories came flooding through his mind. A queasy faintness came over him when the image of his own brother’s grisly remains appeared in his mind’s eye. He didn’t want to remember John’s death, but the memory surfaced anyway. He closed his eyes, willing the images to be gone, but it only intensified them. Bodies were blown to bits, corpses lay in grotesquely contorted shapes, and vultures picked at the dead and the dying.
He remembered battlefields littered with the bodies of his friends and foes alike. It didn’t matter who was lying next to who when you were dead. Each bloody corpse was a man who used to be alive. The loss of so many young men at the beginning of their productive lives was brutally unchecked. He recalled seeing peasants, and even other solders robbing clothes, possessions, and money from the dead. Bodies could be seen lying completely naked with no way to identify who they were or even which side they had been fighting for. Some of the dead soldiers were lying on their backs. It sent a chill up William’s spine to have seen their lifeless eyes open, appearing to stare up at the sky, water collecting in their eye sockets.
In one battle, William had been standing next to a man named Brad when he saw the lower half of his body blown away. As he cradled what was left of his comrade, William cursed his helplessness. He knew Brad would die but there was nothing he could do but tell the man that everything would be okay. The thought teased his mind to just kill Brad and put him out of his misery, but he shocked himself back to reality and pushed the idea aside. William tried to stop the convulsions that wracked Brad’s remains, but it was no use. All he could say was, “It doesn’t look so bad, you’ll make it. The doctor will be here any minute.” Brad tried to respond, but it came out in a splutter as blood filled his mouth. It poured down the sides of his face, soaking William’s hands as he held Brad’s head in his lap. Brad let out one last gurgle before he screamed, coughing blood onto William’s face and clothes, and died. William fought desperately against the countless scenes that assailed his thoughts, sparking from the memory of his brother’s death. There was always blood—always.
“Nice family,” Smith said, snapping William out of his nightmare, though he had only said something to break up the far distant sounds of bombing and weapon fire.
“It won’t be much of a family when this war is over,” William said, staring at nothing, trying to shake away the indelible memories of his brother laying in a pool of blood mixed with filth and machine gun shells. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t drive away the memory of John’s wide-open eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“My brother died two months ago and I will probably die with the rest of these puppets.”
Smith handed back the photograph. William replaced it in his tin box without even glancing at it a second time. He had spent countless hours just looking at that picture, memorizing the faces of his parents and siblings. “This is the kind of war where only your body or what’s left of it returns home,” William stated in a comfortless, uncaring manner.
“Nah,” Smith said, trying to sound hopeful, but failing miserably. “We’ve made it this far, we’ll make it home.”
“Sure,” he commented, his voice suffused with sarcasm.
Smith didn’t know what else to say, so he continued eating his biscuit.
John’s last words played across William’s mind. “…’s only pain…”
“That’s right…” William muttered to himself.
“What’s that?” Smith asked curiously.
“It’s only pain,” he repeated.
“What is?”
“This whole damn war. But now I know what John meant when he said that to me just before he died. My father used to tell us that enduring pain only makes you stronger,” William explained.
“Yeah, that’s true, isn’t it.”
“Damn right it is,” William said resolutely.
*****
The war continued, but William found courage in his brother’s words, “It’s only pain.” The thought of death was not as daunting to him now. After all he’d seen, William was resolved to fight this war with the passion his brother had possessed.
He kept a precise record of everything he did and saw. He wrote letters home, even though he knew they might not get to his family until the war was over. He wrote poetry in an attempt to escape his surroundings—anything to keep his mind occupied.
*****
Dear Mother,
The war goes on, but I am well. We won a battle two days ago, but there will be another battle soon. I can feel it. The days merge into weeks, weeks slur into months, and the months converge into years. There is no telling when the war will be over—it will just end one day. There will be no more fighting, and we’ll all be sent home.
When I left to join the war, I wanted to get away from home and escape the life I felt trapped in. It took the war to turn me around. Every night I go to sleep thinking of home, but the nightmares always follow, never giving me rest. I realized that you don’t always know what you have until you lose it.
I try not to think about the present. Tomorrow I may have to murder other young men, merely to keep myself from being killed. I’d almost rather die than to continue killing, but one thought holds me back from giving up, and that is John. It’s too dark to write anymore.
Your son,
William
“Are you writing again, William?” a soldier asked, looking up from the nearby poker game he and several other men were playing, huddled close to the cards in the growing dusk.
“Yes,” he responded as he shut his journal. The man shrugged and went back to his game. William knew that most of the men gave up writing to their families long ago when the mail stopped coming and going. It didn’t matter to him though. He hoped that someday, his family could read all the letters he wrote to them. Anyway, writing calmed his thoughts and lessened the ever-present nightmares that assailed his mind.
*****
In the months before the war ended, William earned several medals and was labeled a hero for his feats of bravery in action. He was wounded once and he dragged his injured companion, Lieutenant Smith Richardson, three miles to the field hospital, saving Smith’s life. But William didn’t feel like a hero. The victory had been hard and bitter. His medals hung heavily on the breast of his uniform as his train pulled into the station, a platform full of people ready and waiting to welcome him home.
