Fallen

Senior, 1st prize

Orla Hennessey, Rice College, Ennis

I’M walking on a tightrope. Completely alone, I stand suspended above the abyss. Sweat beads on my forehead, my palms are slick and clammy as I clench and unclench my fists. A tentative step forward, then a flash. Another and another until nothing but images of death and destruction surround me.
Scoot, Matlock, Smith, Derriere, Nathan, Jones, O’Reilly, to name but a few. The images of the dismembered and disfigured corpses of my comrades, my friends, flash before my eyes. I want to shout and scream, but in this strange world of stagnant air and perpetual night, I have no voice. Cracks appear in the fabric of this morbid reality, as my disjointed thoughts implode. No gust of wind or sharp push has toppled me; but my mind has unbalanced and unhinged me. My resolve splinters under the massive weight of my own subconscious. Then it shatters, the pieces crumbling and plummeting into the never-ending darkness below. And I with them.
I jolt awake. My breaths come in short, strained gasps as I try to steady myself. I instinctively draw my legs into my chest, my boots scuffling along the dirt. For a moment all I can hear is the sound of my breath as my lungs heave and the thunderous echo of my heartbeat.
Glancing across, I see Williams in his ill-fitting uniform staring at me from where he sits, shaded from the harsh afternoon sunlight. Temperatures are sky-high today but that’s Peleilu for you. Hot as hell, but about half as inviting.
“What are you looking at, Kid.”
He looks away hurriedly.
Tyler Williams, 18-years-old. He seems so young but who am I to judge, only four years his senior. Four years. Three of which I had spent here with my fellow Marines. Every moment of it embedded deep in my memory. Chipping away fragment after fragment of my soul.
“TEN-SHUN!”
Sergeant Mackey’s voice cuts through the air like a whip.
“MOVE OUT!”
My heart plummets, the moment we’ve all been dreading. I grab my rifle as I rise to my feet, taking my position in front of Kid. My pulse like thunder in my ears, I await the signal. It comes swift and silent, like a whisper on the wind.
We start running, a single mile to cross to safety. At first, all is eerily tranquil, the calm before the storm. But as God is swift to open the Heavens, the enemy made no delay in unleashing hell on their fellow men. Gunfire and mortars rip through the air, illuminating the sky. Each boasts their own distinctive sound and tempo, like each element of an orchestra. While posing a veritable threat on their own, when they combine, a terrifying symphony is composed. But on this playing field, the devil was the conductor and we simply the pawns in his ungodly games. It starts off faintly, like the gentle pizzicato of the violin. But it builds, becoming an everlasting cacophony of sound. The crescendo reaches the climax as the earth itself seems to explode beneath our feet.
I lie on my back, not remembering how I got there as every fibre of my body erupts in pain and the bells of the angelus toll in my ears. I try desperately to make my battered body obey my all too fragile mind. A pair of strong hands seizes me, pulling me up roughly in a flourish of dust.
We rush helter-skelter through the chaos, desperately fighting to keep our footing on the harsh terrain. We fight any opposition we meet, in conditions too close for guns, as the ill-equipped enemies employ ambush tactics. Forced into hand-to-hand combat, my every action repulses me. To shoot a man from a distance is one thing; to see fear take hold as you force the stock of your rifle into his face is another. A guttural scream in a language dead to me pervades the killing blow. Perhaps he screamed for mercy.
Kid sprints along in front of me, refusing to look down at the bodies of our fallen friends. For a second, the smoke clears and I can see the thick copse of trees that is our destination. There is an instantaneous blossoming of hope, but hope it seems is fickle and despair constant.
For a moment the entire world seems to freeze as I watch Kid turn back, to make sure I’m still there. I scream at the top of my soot-filled lungs, trying desperately to prevent the inevitable. But it’s no use.
The scissors of fate had snapped shut  and Kid’s time was up. In a thousand dreams thereafter, I watch him fall as the shrapnel slices through his callow neck. His blue eyes widen, as if transfixed on some distant sight and I can almost hear his breath catch in his throat as he tumbles bodily onto the scorched earth.
I react with a soldier’s ingrained efficiency, grabbing him by the lapels and hauling him behind the burnt-out carcass of a Charlie jeep. My calloused fingers press hard against his neck as I desperately try in vain to stop the bleeding. I howl for a medic that isn’t coming. I can only watch helplessly as he takes a final lurching breath, his pupils contract one last time before dilating; ever to stare at nothing. It takes 18  years to grow a man but only seconds to destroy him. I don’t know how long I stayed there, cradling the limp head of a boy too young for war.
Some men joined the army because they were promised adventure. Others because of a radically misplaced sense of patriotism. Others, like me, had nowhere else to go.
But death wasn’t prejudiced and neither was he merciful. On the battlefield we were all the same. Black or white, strong or weak. It didn’t matter. Instantaneous, random movements in time decided our fate. All we could do was be ready for it. But none of us ever truly were.
Years later, the terrors that plagued me that day attack me in the depths of night. I am forever a slave to the dark, irrepressible memories that seep into my dreams, tainting them with the horrors of war.
I sit in my bed, my wife by my side. It’s Sunday and soon she’ll rise to get ready for church. She’ll turn to me and suggest that I come but as usual, I’ll refuse. Some men turned to faith after the war, seeking solace wherever they could find it. I had turned my back on it. If there was a God, he wasn’t one I wanted to believe in. I stand in the window bathed by the cold light of a frosty morning. I shiver but not from the ice outside, but that in my heart.
For I know as clear as the day before me that though I had survived the war, it had destroyed me all the same.