War

Whilst sorting through my stuff and downsizing those things one accumulates over the years. I came across an old piece of homework.

As part of the curriculum we were set a task, that task was to convey how it might feel to have been in the trenches in the First and Second World Wars.

It was set last week five years ago.

I remember it vividly because the day I read this out was today five years ago. My day started with war and ended with what was to start another.

The syntax may be out, it may be muddled, it may be a hotch potch of words, but I'm posting this because I've just re-found it, and it seems rather poignant that it should have been today that it resurfaced.

So, from the past I bring you;



What I Imagine War To Be Like

I imagine war to be like the putrid odour of decaying tobacco.

To know that every breath you take may be your last.

The feeling of needles bristling the nape of your neck

And to avoid close contact for fear of losing companionship

To know that all of your worst fears will come to haunt you

And to see a light in the sky of burning bodies and not that of the stars, the moon or the sun.

To know that somewhere, someone is trying to kill you in any way possible;

No matter how inhumane it may be.

I imagine that war is when all you can see is death and destruction as the people at home see the sky.

To fear sleep though you welcomed it, once in times more serene with skies of blue.

To know that the air you breathe contains the scent of death, and gas that will fill your lungs and drown you.

To have an expectancy that when you awake the person next you may have died in their sleep;

And you feel regret that it wasn't you.

The jealousy you may feel because of the dead who have lost all pain.

And to regret the constant feeling of remorse, for all the things you haven't done.

To feel that as all your companions die, your heart splits further in two.

You know that you cannot find comfort in food or a trip down the pub, and that the only way of stress relief is to pummel the enemy with shells.

And to try through these shells to transfer the pain you are feeling to those that caused you pain.

After a while - perhaps a week - you will feel no remorse for causing pain, but will be taking revenge for your own.

For every moment of everyday the one feeling in the air is fear.

Fear for your family.

Fear for your friends.

The fear that the enemy will triumph and conquer everything you hold dear.

Everyday will contain fear, not of death, but of pain.

Never ending pain.

Pain of the soul,

And of the mind.

But mostly you don't fear death.

Death has become trivial.

A saviour, a release, your passage to peace.

As nothing could be worse than this hell on Earth.

That people call war.


A mere three letter word, and yet it conveys the many fears of many people.