Homecoming (War)

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Alright, this is a story I wrote for my english class, but had a great time writing it. I wrote it after reading a few war books, and I tried to make my own story out of those stories. It doesn't have as much action as you would expect, it is more about expectations/realities of soldiers.

Warning: Somewhat graphic images, language, and violence

“Deep breath, breathe,” the soldier whimpered to himself.
“Ffft-ffft-ffft-ffft-ffft-ffft-king-king-ging-ging-ffft-ffft.”

The sand exploded around the soldier as bullets came streaking down from the towers into the sand and the chunk of metal he was hiding behind. He squirmed and tried to make himself as small as possible. The bullets couldn’t find them – he wouldn’t let them. He dug into the dirt with his boots and tried to escape, but the bullets continued rocketing towards him, spitting up the sand all around him. It made the smoky fog even harder to see through.

Unfortunately for the soldier hiding behind the metal barrier, he could see far enough. Strewn around him were bodies of the dead and dying, the blood and gore draining from them into the sea, it’s red waters continually lapping up against the bleeding sand. The bodies were motionless, except for the few dying that were writhing and calling for their mothers. The soldier glanced over quickly and saw one man trying to crawl back to his legs, which were a dozen feet behind him. Another boy, just barely eighteen, was looking down at his own intestines, which pulsed rhythmically and spewed a gross yellowish liquid. The soldier would have puked from seeing the young boy crying for his family while trying to keep himself together had he not already vomited everything from just being scared.

He closed his eyes and began crying, gripping his weapon fervently and trying to make himself small. The bullets kept flying, and he was just waiting for the moment when one would find its way through the barrier and into his head. He would have waited behind that barrier all day had he not heard a shouted order that seemed to come from God Himself.

“Move up! Covering fire!” came from the soldier’s right, followed by the thunderous sound of a Thompson firing. The soldier spun around and peeked his head over the barrier. The bullets from the tower had stopped for the moment, and the sight of his fellow soldiers running along the beach made him recall his duty. He picked up his M1 Garand and scurried around to the other side of the barrier.

He could just barely make out the next piece of metal that gave cover from the German bullets. Squinting in the fog, he breathed and began towards safety, staying low to the ground. His boots clomped along heavily, unless he stepped on a piece of a body, at which point there was a squishing sound that made the very core of the soldier cringe. The barrier became bigger as he approached it, and he began counting the steps it would take. Twenty, sixteen, and twelve went by before he heard the whistling sound.

Beside him, the sand exploded upward and the soldier was blown sideways, his body propelling into the sand, which cut like razor blades. Everything went silent for the soldier. He didn’t hear the bullets, the mortars, or the screaming for ten full seconds. Then it all came rushing back to him as he felt something warm and sticky running down his face and into his eyes. The bullets came searching for him again, the explosions came menacingly closer, and the screams now came from his mouth. His face was warm and he could not see out of his stinging eyes. Sand and blood had clouded his sight, clogged his nose, and choked him as he tried to breathe. He couldn’t stand up, for his legs were bone-chillingly cold. All he could do was wait out in the open for the bullets to hit him.

“Why did you move from behind the barrier Neal?” his brother asked.

Neal smiled sarcastically at the question. “If I had stayed behind there crying and throwing up, what would you think of me?”

He smiled again when his brother nodded in understanding. His brother didn’t understand, but that was alright. At least he was listening to the story and not getting disgusted by the horrible images Neal remembered. The last person Neal told had stopped him halfway through a story that was not half as gruesome. But his brother listened, and it kept Neal fears at bay. If he couldn’t talk about it, he relived it in dreams, and facing his past there was unbearable.

His brother might not understand, but at least he listened. Jim, the captain, didn’t have anyone to tell when he went back home to Michigan and he disappeared. Eric the Eye, the best Allied sniper there ever was, hung himself from his own gun strap when people stopped listening to him. Hank, who had searched every German body for a Luger pistol, shot himself with the Luger because his friends left him because he wouldn’t stop talking about the war.

They were the lucky ones – most of Neal’s friends didn’t even make it home. The two Michaels brothers got shot down before they even touched sand. Neal had to step on their bloody carcasses to get to safety. One of his other friends had been hiding behind the barrier with Neal and had his head blown off when he looked over the top of the metal. The body had fallen on Neal, the steaming gore sliding onto Neal’s lap. The smell was so bad that Neal almost fainted. Fear was the only thing that kept him conscious. There were others as well, but Neal did not see their deaths, and if he had, it would not matter – every bleeding, bloated corpse looked the same when it had been mutilated by the MG-42s.

Those who died were glorified as heroes, too. They had saved the war by storming that beach, or so it was said. Neal did not understand how dying before you even got to the beach made you a hero. It was ironic, too, how all of the letters that were sent home to the parents all said they were heroes, no matter what happened. The man who **** his pants out of fear and got killed before he could ever fire his gun was just as heroic as the man who killed Hitler.

Neal didn’t even like the word ‘hero.’ A hero was a selfless, moral person who did great deeds. He saved lives without concern for himself. He wasn’t afraid of anything, and he would inspire his fellow soldiers to become heroes as well. He has superhuman strength and wisdom. He was nearly invincible. He would willingly sacrifice himself to save women and children, but he would also find a way out of death.

A hero was who everyone looked up to with glistening eyes. Superman was a hero. Muscular, good looking, confident, and infallible. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That was what people expected of heroes.

It was ironic that people expected and believed that World War II soldiers were heroes. They did not believe or want to hear the true characteristics of their heroes. The soldiers were not selfless or moral, though. They would do anything to stay alive, even if it meant their friends, their brothers, would die. Neal had watched one of his friends who had been shot in the leg struggle to get for cover, but Neal did not help him because he was scared. But Neal was a hero because people didn’t want to hear that he didn’t save his friend.

The heroes of the war were not brave. When bullets were buzzing by their ears, the heroes cried in fear. They threw up everything in their stomach at the sight of death, and then they gave up and died like all of the rest. Heroes didn’t have strength, wisdom, or courage on their side. Luck was their only ally. Heroes became heroes if they got lucky and the bullets missed them, or if their bullets hit the enemy. And even if they were unlucky and got killed, they were turned into heroes by the false credence that anyone who died in war did something good during the war.

Those expectations were laughable to Neal. The people at home didn’t know what really went on, and when they were told, they conveniently forgot. They always asked Neal to tell a war story, expecting the one about how he had saved two wounded soldiers from some Germans in a shelled out building. Neal would try to explain that it was an accident, and he had almost killed both of them, but all they would hear was that he had killed eleven Nazis with automatics while carrying two wounded Americans on his back. But when he corrected them, saying that he had accidentally set off one of his grenades, which knocked over a building onto a Nazi outpost, killing three Nazis and two American prisoners and just barely missing the other two Americans, the listeners of the story would claim he was so modest and just think he was even more of a hero.

Granted, there were some men who were legitimate war heroes, but they did not come away from the war strong. Eric the Eye had saved his entire platoon four times with excellent rifle jobs, but no one would listen to his stories about the bodies of the Germans he had killed. He had saved Neal’s life personally in the shelled town, a month after Neal had been wounded on the beach. But the hero Eric had killed himself. Heroes weren’t supposed to be in enough anguish to do that. Maybe a little sorrow was all right, but it just made heroes stronger because they would go exact revenge and save more lives.
Neal stood up slowly, this gesture signifying to his brother that he was done telling stories for tonight. His brother nodded, offered to cook him something, and then left the room when Neal declined. Neal wasn’t hungry – remembering his friends was not the most appetizing subject. He stretched his leg, which still hurt every now and then and walked into his bedroom. On his dresser lay the medals he had received after the war. Two Purple Hearts – one for the beach wound, and another for the wound that sent him home – , a World War II Victory Medal for being a part of the war, and the medal that made him least proud, a Bronze Star, for ‘saving’ the American soldiers. Neal stared at them for a moment before gently picking them up in one hand. Spinning around, he hurled them into the open door of the bathroom. He heard them crash around in the room and saw the Bronze Star fall into the toilet with a small splash.

He flicked off the lights and climbed into his bed with his clothes on. The darkness began creeping in around him, but he lay still on the bed, thinking about the war. He had given up trying not to, and now he spent his nights attempting to conquer his fears. Neal brought up images of every dead body he had seen, imagined the smell it gave off, and tried to keep his stomach still. He breathed deeply and heard the sounds of gunfire. He held his breath, and the sounds and pictures became a little fuzzy. With an exhale he banished the pictures of the war.
Neal’s friends came up in his mind next. He saw Eric, Jim, Hank, the Michaels brothers, and so many more. A story popped into his mind about each, and a tear slipped from his closed eyes. Their deaths had not been easy to bear, but he had seen so many horrors that he did not feel as badly for them as he would have before the war. He felt worse that they were supposed to mean something more than just being human. They were supposed to be special, superhuman, and eternal because they went to war. The people who didn’t know war thought they knew who these men were, and that made Neal sad. They were expected to be heroes, and no matter how unheroic they were, they could not shake that name. They didn’t want to be heroes, they just wanted to be human. Neal closed his eyes tighter and cursed those who heard the stories but did not listen, those who killed Eric and Hank and Jim, and those who thought they knew what war was.

As the darkness folded in around Neal, he calmed his mind. Nothing he said would change what those people thought, so he decided not to even bother cursing them. He didn’t have to worry about them because his brother was not like them. He would listen silently, letting Neal heal himself. And that was all Neal needed, really. With that comforting thought, Neal let himself slip away into a restful sleep, one of the few that he had had since returning from War.

 

Totally AWESOME!

 

Saber, that was brilliant. You really managed to portray the characters feeling, make them belive the words and picture the story in their heads. You need to write more like this, its one of these stories that makes you think.. Do you have experience of this story? You managed to sum up the feelings of many war vetrans in one story.

 

Thanks Dalveen. But no, luckily I have not had to experience this at all (I am only 16... hopefully I don't get drafted in the future), but reading and hearing some of the stories from my grandfather (WWII veteran) really helped me out.

 

Solid work. I'd offer up a bit of constructive criticism on word choice and sentence structure, but presumably your English teacher already has.

If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend checking out some of David Drake's stuff (Redliners, the Sharp End, The Tank Lords, The Butcher's Bill, Caught in the Crossfire). It's rather like what you're going for here, albeit in a scifi setting.

Honestly, his stories hit me hard than Saving Private Ryan did the first time I read them. And, yes, he's a Vietnam vet.

Also, check out Flags of Our Fathers when the DVD is released, and Letters From Iwo Jima when it hits theaters this month.