The War That Killed Us ALL

The War That Killed Us All
Ch. 1
Charles is awoken by his mother pouring ice water on his bed. “It’s too hot to go to school today ma! Can’t I just stay home?” Charles, annoyingly, says.
“No dear you have to go to school,” she says.
“But ma it’s a freaking Saturday! I don’t have school anymore anyways, it’s summer!”
“Watch yer mouth young man.”
“I’m too damn tired to get up!”
I told you to watch yer mouth.” She picks up a yard stick and smacks him in his nose.
“Ah, what’d you do that fer!”
“Ooh, you better go feed the chickens or I’ll wack ya one again!”
“Yes mamma. I’ll get up if’n you’d get off my feet!”
She whacks him in the nose again.
“Aahhhh, look what you did now momma.” A drizzle of blood starts to come out of his nose. “I think I’m gonna faint.” He focuses on the blood and looks at his mother and thinks he sees a tear fall from her right eye.

“Ah man. That’s annoying. I hate it when that happens.” He begins to get out of bed and looks at his watch.
“Noon already, wow I slept too long. What was up with her?”
He puts his feet on the hardwood floor and a chill goes up his spine. He walks out of his room and down the steps. The fuzzy feeling of the shag carpet adds a warmer feel to his feet. He can hear crying.
“Probably moms.”
It’s in short sobs. He turns the corner of the stairs and looks around the kitchen. Nothing was out of place except for his father cradling his mother who, as he suspected, was the one crying. He walks over to the fridge and takes out the milk than grabs two glasses from the cupboard. In one he pours the milk for himself, since it was his favorite drink. Soft drinks cost too much for his family to buy thus making it hard for them to even get milk. He pours water into the cup from the faucet and puts it on the table for his mother to drink. Her hands shaking, she picks it up. The water is too close to the top and because her hands are shaking, she spills it on the table. “What’s wrong mom?”
“I’m sorry Charles. I’m so sorry.” The rest of her words are inaudible.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Son, you should read this.”
“Why what is it?”
“Just read it.”
“We are sorry to inform. Wait what the hell?”
“Son, I am sorry but they have made a draft and your number was pulled.”
“What! No, I am not gonna fight in that damn war!”
“I am sorry son. Sit down. You have to go though.”
“Why do I have to! I just finished School! We’ve only been out for a day! Yet they already think they own my life!”
“Son, you have to go. They called you to come. If you don’t, you’ll go to jail.”
“I would rather go tail jail for six months than go fight in a war and most likely die!”
Charles gets up from the table.
“Son you have to go.”
Knocking on the door tells the family to stop their bickering.
All three people look towards the front door. But they can’t see through the wall in-between them.
“Who is that?”
“It’s the army son. They told us two days ago that they would come. We just couldn’t tell you. We didn’t want you to fret about going.”
“No, I don’t want to go!”
The knocking continues.
“Son, you have to.”
His father walks to the front door and let’s the MP’s inside.
“Do you have your things together?” The MP on the right asks.
“No I don’t but it doesn’t matter I am not going.”
“Charles,” his mother walks over to him, grabbing his shoulder. “You have to go. I am sorry for not telling you before, but you need to go. Though this world may be a wretched place there will always be war. People have to fight that war and you have been summoned. You father is too old to fight and you are the other male in this household. We will be waiting for you to come home. Charles.”
“Yes mother.”
“I love you.”
She rests her head on his shoulder and than hugs him. Kissing him on the cheek she says, “We love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Sir, we need to be leaving. Get your things together and let’s go,” says the right MP.
“Yes.”
“A word of advice, you my want to hurry up and learn to “say sir yes sir” and give respect to your commanders.’
“Aren’t you an MP though, you don’t get the respect from men in the army. You don’t have a higher rank than me. So don’t push it.”
The man looks blankly at him and grabs his collar.
“You better give it to me.”
“Sir I may be only eighteen but this is harassment.”
The MP looks at him and lets go of him.
“Hurry up,” Says the left MP.


Charles steps out of his doorway with a duffle bag over his shoulder. A military transport truck is in the road. A few crying families are around it. Five men are inside the truck. Charles walks to the truck and climbs up the back into the holding space.
“Hello people.” He sets down his bag next to a black man.
“Hey, aren’t you old man Peterson’s son?”
“Yeh, wat’s it to yerself?”
“Nothing much, just that we used to play together when we was young.”
“Yeah, thas right. I do believe we did. Well, than we’re gonna get along just fine.”
“Yeah, I hope so. We’re you been? Eva since you left the school I lost all my friends.”
“I’m serry fer that but I had to move with my pa & ma to Colerado. I didn’t mean ta leave ya here alone.”
“Nah, it’s ok, Johan. I missed ya but we were seven er eight. We were still children. We couldn’t tell we was neva gonna see each other again.”
“Yeah...”
Johan scoots over to let Charles sit next to him. Charles makes sure the duffle bag is between them because of his past occurrence with a man he thought he knew but wasn’t who he really was. The MP’s that came inside his house to escort him out get into the truck and start the engine. The two MP’s that stood outside of the back of the truck incase the men didn’t want to go to military base
And tried to get out of the back climbed inside and closed the back hatch. The truck pulls away from the houses, bouncing around because of the hard cage springs in military transports. The men inside all have one thing in common. They were torn away from their families to fight in a war that was not their own. A war they would either die in or come back different men from. Some of them would die and some of them would receive the Congressional Honor Award. But all they knew was they were going to fight a war they hated.



Ch. 2
The trip wasn’t very far. They had only traveled thirty miles or so, but to them, it seemed it to be hours. This was the rest of their lives. The truck pulled up to a military base. A ten foot high interlaced fence surrounded it with barbed wire on top. The truck enters through a large twenty five foot gate with a guard booth in the middle. The MP in the passenger seat shows an I. D. card to the guard in the booth. The fence that closed the hole glides open to let the truck into a training camp. Men are seen jogging around in camouflage uniforms. Whole platoons marching in line are walking by. Five buildings are seen. A barracks for the men on the far right of the camp looks rundown and ancient. The MP’s get out of the front of the vehicle and walk to the back of the truck.
“Get out, your bunks await.”
The left MP snickers at his own remark and the right unlatches the door. Each man gets out with ease but as Johan gets out the left MP on the inside of the truck trips him.
“Get outa hear nigga.” He yells at him.
Each man caries their luggage to the barracks and enters inside closely followed by the MP’s. Twenty bunk beds on either side of the room line the walls. Each bed is approximately six feet long and four feet wide facing towards the center of the room with a three foot gap between the beds. The beds have a six inch pad, each bed also has a mini pillow and a green blanket on top of a white one.
Most of them are taken accept for the ones at the back of the room.
“Move towards the back so that eacha ya gets on da top and da bottom. No exceptions for any reason!” One of the MP’s yell hoarsely.
All the men shuffle to the back and greet their beds.
“This will be your bed for the next week.”
“Week! You mean we are only gonna be training for a week?” Charles questions.
“Yes, that is how long you get to learn to fight them bastards.”
“Them bastards! What have they done to you! Nothing.”
“Sit down asshole. Your not, in any way in hell, going to survive with that mouth.”
The MP pushes him down onto the bottom bunk, than walks away motioning to the other MP’s to follow.
“Where did you live?” Questions one of the men new.
Charles answered “You don’t remember any of us? We all lived in the same neighborhood. Now we are all going to die together.”
“Aw hell man. You can’t think like that! You do and your sure to die.”
“Yeah, I guess. Well, he is Johan, I am Charley, he is. Um, what is your name. Oh yeah. He is Michael. That is Reed. Um, that is Alex. The only one we don not know is you. We all grew up together. So, who are you anyways?”
“I am Seth. Who did you say was that again.”
Seth points to the man sitting down reading a love novel.
“He is yet to say a word to any of us. Oh yeah. He was also the first onto the truck, wasn’t he?”
“It’s no use talkin to him man. When he was young he went to out play with me and Charley. We went to a tree house and were playing around when an old man came out and shot at us for being on his land. See we weren’t where we were supposed to be and the old man had told us to stay of his land or he’d shoot us. But we didn’t care. Come on. We were fun loving boys. Well he shot at us when we came out. The bullet ripped through Reed’s throat destroying his voice box. He hasn’t been able to talk since he was eight. His father was also.”
“Michael that is enough info for now. He doesn’t need to know that!”
“Yeah, I guess, whatever. Forget I said that last part, Michael.”
“Whatever man. Whatever.”
“We should get some sleep. Everyone. I have read some things about training camps and tomorrow is going to kill us all. I mean it. We should rest.”

The bugle is sounded. All the new men wake up after everyone else because they weren’t properly instructed my the MP’s to get up, get clean (means to shave and wash their hands/face), and meet them outside promptly at seven ten that morning, ten minutes after the bugle played. Charles was the first to wake up. He looks at the round clock on the wall and yells out to all the men inside to wake up.
“Aw shit! Everyone wake up right now! We have to get dressed and outa here!”
Johan wakes up first.
“What the hell man let us sleep.”
“No, get up right now! We are supposed to be at the calling plain now!”
“What is the calling plain?”
“It is where they take morning roll call man. We aren’t gonna get any breakfast because we didn’t wake up now man!”
“Aw shit! I can’t handle this life. Everyone wake up now.”
The men get up and Johan tells them what to do, according to Charles’ instructions. Each one shaves using the same razor and heads out the door.