Life is a Fleeting Thing

Life is a Fleeting Thing

         Life is so very fragile.  The slightest action can alter it completely or bring it to an end.  If only I had ran two yards to the left I might be sitting in a trench writing to Lucienne now.  As it is now, that is not what happened.  I was gripped by fear, and it is fear that drove my actions.  As the bullets hurled down range I tried to steady my nerves.  There would not be much time between volleys to navigate no man’s land and find suitable cover.  As the rattle of machine gun fire ceases I am driven up and out of the trench by sheer willpower.  After that, the fear takes over and I sprint as fast as I can, each step in the mud aching to be my last.  My boots slip and slide as they beg me to seek cover in an artillery shell hole.  I push forward, my mind gripped with fear knowing that a single sniper bullet could reach me at any moment and stop my scramble.  Then without warning, my feet carry me left into a dark and wet shell hole.  This fear, this unrelenting fear, has driven me not to safety but instead into the exact thing from which it was running. 

         Stumbling into the hole, I trip; there is something already in the hole.  I crash to the ground, my face slamming hard against the soft mud.  As I roll to my back, my stomach and chest light afire and I find myself unable to yell out in pain.  I attempt to crawl up and out of the hole, but something has reached up and bit me and I cannot move.  My first thought is that I am shot, but the silent, still air screams otherwise.  It is then that I realize I have been stabbed.  It is not something that was already in the hole, it is someone.  The fear is back instantly.  I know that he is still in the hole with me.  I can feel his presence. The small amount of body heat that radiates near me gives away his position.  I close my eyes and picture my wife and daughter playing amongst the blossoming flowers in our yard and wait for the final blow to end my life.  It does not come.  There is a sickening sound, a wet sucking noise that reaches my ears.  Has he been shot?  Is he also dying?  I take a deep breath and hold it trying to listen for him.  As I exhale the bone chilling wet sound returns and I become all too aware that my lungs have been punctured. 

         Life is a fleeting thing, too often squandered on war.  I know my life was.  Laying here, gasping, looking up at the dark night sky riddled with bullet holes, I reflect on my life knowing full well that each breath I take might be my last. It seems that not that long ago war was just a word, a word with little more meaning than Hell.  Now I know those torments.  Now I know those fears.  Now I know what war truly is, and I hate it.

         My civilian life was not glamorous. I was not wealthy, but I was happy.  I was not a politician or a doctor or a lawyer.  I was a simple printer, in a simple town in France called Courgent.  I lived there with my beautiful wife and equally beautiful daughter.  We did not have a mansion, just a small house on the edge of town, but it was home.  I carry their picture with me always.  Standing in their yellow sun dresses in front of our ivy clad wall, the sun smiling upon their faces.  Those were the days that I lived for.  I did not trouble myself with the intricacies of politics, but I was aware of the French past.  Rebellion and revolution are deeply ingrained in the French psyche.  However, if you would have asked me then where I would be five years hence, I highly doubt my thoughts would have been of me lying here, in this mud hole, in this god forsaken land. 

         Thinking back upon this war that I am in, I shudder.  The things I have seen, the things I have done are too monstrous to describe.  I have seen parts of bodies stuck in trees, blown apart by an artillery shell.  The men I fight alongside are not monsters, I am not a monster; it is war that has made us do monstrous things.  The men we fight, no, the boys we fight are not much different than us.  They speak different languages, but they use those strange words to write letters home promising a safe return, to give each other a hard time, and to curse this war as much as we do.  Having been in this war for some time now, it is not the man in the trench across from me that I have grown to hate; it is the politicians who have put us here.  As I lie here, in the growing daylight I do not pity myself.  It is these men that I pity.  My war is over; I have done my part and I have died for my country.  They are still out there gripped by fear, waiting for their day to come. 

         There is nothing romantic about this place, nothing glorious about this death, but I suppose that is not why I enlisted.  I enlisted for honor and for national pride.  It was for this land of France that I have grown to love, and call home. It is where my wife’s tears soaked the ground of the cemetery where we buried her father.  Where I watched my daughter take her first steps in the sun drenched lawn in the back of our house.  It is where my family has grown and, God willing, will continue to grow.  It is that land that I think upon now.

         I think and cannot help but shed a tear for my poor wife.  Lying here, gasping for breath, knowing I will die soon, I do not think of myself.  Instead, it is my lovely wife, Lucienne, to whom my thoughts turn to now.  Tomorrow, as my body lies here, she will receive a letter that I wrote her promising to return to her soon.  I do not know how many of my letters she has received and how many more she will get before the tragic news of my death will reach her, but for those days at least she will be happy.  She will not have to suffer with the loss of her husband and the father to her child. For this I am grateful.  She will not see this monster I have become either.  I will not have to go home and look upon my daughter with the same eyes that have looked upon this devastation.  It is better that she will remember me as I was before the war.  I was a happy and loving husband and father.  The greatest fear that I developed in the war was the fear that I would return with this same look in my eyes. 

         The sun is shining now and I can hear movement at my feet.  I argue with myself to keep my eyes closed but the curiosity gets the better of me.  Upon opening my eyes I see my enemy, the one who has stolen this life from me.  I am terrified that this is the moment I have waited for all night.  I want one more second; I want to think of my wife’s face once more. I try calling out for her but my voice is choked out by the blood from my wounds.  The man whispers at me, “no, no” and he brings me water which moistens my cotton mouth.  I do not hate this boy, I pity him.  He is young and all he knows is a life of despair, death and fear.  He is too young to know the love of a woman like I do.  He has no children who engulf his being, but he is too old for the influence of his parents to still be strong.  It is not myself that I pity, it is him.

         My breaths are getting shorter and I know that it is not much longer before I succumb to my wounds.  My desire to live, to return home to my wife and daughter now outweigh any sense of duty to my country.  If I could, I would have never come in the first place.  Those men back home, preaching of duty and honor for country have not seen the horrors of war.  They speak in vague terms meant to inspire.  They do not know that dying for your country means lying here, bleeding in a mud hole next to the man who took your life.  It is not romantic, it is not glamorous, it is painful and terrifying and so very lonely.  War kills all those who are involved.  Either you die, like me on this battlefield, or you die inside like the man on the other side of the mud hole. 

         The sun hangs heavy in the sky and my chest is mostly full now.  I close my eyes and say a prayer for my wife and child.  I ask that they never see the horrors that I have seen, that they do not feel the fear that grips a man at war.  All I ask for is their happiness.  I do not think of my love for my country, all I think of is my love for my family.  It is their faces that I last see in my head when I take my final breath.