• The Weight of War
    By Haratio TaFotter


    tab Anthony and the others lined up. They wore their light blue, freshly pressed uniforms, carried their packs, and had their rifles slung over their shoulders. Anthony, like the other boys in the kingdom, was getting ready to go to the war across the sea to the east. The mood among the new soldiers was light, and they were ready to make their fathers proud in the trenches.
    tab “You ready for this, Anthony?” asked a black-haired boy named Francis. “You look like you’re leaning a little to the right.”
    tab “It’s my rifle,” Anthony replied with a grin. “It’s heavier than the training rifles. I bet I’ll be used to the weight in a couple of days.”
    tab “I hope so,” Francis mused. “I’d hate to see you facing the enemy like that.”
    tab At the front of the formation, five drummers began to beat out the pace of the procession. The boys, ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, put on their helmets and marched onto the main street of the capital city, leading them straight down to the pier where they would board the ship that would take them to the glorious battlefield. Once they had stepped into the open, they were greeted by the crowd of onlookers, wanting to see off these brave young boys, these heroes. A fluttering flurry of confetti began to drift down from the buildings, and everyone cheered loudly. Some of the soldiers on the outside of the formation were awarded flower wreaths by young women, a customary symbol of goodwill and luck.
    tab “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Anthony shouted over the din.
    tab “Indeed it is,” Francis hollered back as he caught a rose that was thrown to the center of the soldiers.
    tab Anthony smiled as they marched along. To think in two weeks, they, the members of the 250th Infantry Unit, would reach the enemy to fight and die for king and country, and bring victory to their motherland. He knew that far to the west, his parents were at their shop, praying for their young soldier. Anthony would make them proud, they’d see.
    tab “You feeling alright, Anthony?” Francis asked.
    tab “Yeah,” Anthony said laughingly, “I’m just fine.”

    tab “Come up here, Francis! You’ve got to see this!”
    tab Francis wobbled up the stairs that led to the upper deck, where Anthony was looking at their destination. “What are you shouting about?” Francis grumbled as he squinted at the bumpy line on the horizon.
    tab “That’s it, Francis! That’s Port Hurmer, that’s the beachhead!” Anthony shouted excitedly. Half an hour later, they could see what had once been their enemy’s coastal defense. The monumental concrete and steel towers that had once guarded the Hurmer Coast with cannons and machineguns were now empty colossi, billowing black smoke like chimneys as the fires inside them still burned, fueled by oil and gas that heated the structures in the winter.
    tab “Can you see the flag on the coast?” asked Francis. Anthony took a pair of binoculars that he kept in his coat and looked through the lenses. There high above the men on the beach, he could see the blue flag of his homeland, bearing a golden lion, accompanied on either side by a sword and shield.
    tab “It’s beautiful,” Anthony said quietly, almost whispering.
    tab “Just wait until you get a good look at it,” Francis mumbled as he turned around to head below deck. “My brother wrote in a letter that it’s quite a spectacle up close.”

    tab Forty-five minutes after they saw the flag on the beach, the 250th marched off the ship onto a makeshift dock. Francis and Anthony looked at the men at the camp, who watched them closely.
    tab “Just look at them,” Anthony marveled. Each of the men looked tall and strong, like the men on the propaganda posters back home. He didn’t notice their gaunt faces, their empty, bloodshot eyes. Anthony was too caught up in the excitement.
    tab Someone ahead of them called them to a halt, and they stopped on the moist, sandy ground. At the front of the group was a muscular man with red-brown hair and an unshaved face. The man took the pipe out of his mouth and sighed. “Kids,” he mumbled as he scratched the side of his face. “I am told that I will command a new unit, and they send me children carrying rifles. Damn it all!”
    tab “What do you think he’s saying?” Francis asked.
    tab “I don’t know,” whispered Anthony, “but he doesn’t look too happy.”
    tab “Alright, listen up, ‘cause I’m only going to say this once!” the man shouted. “My name is Lieutenant Vincent Grierson. You are to address me as either Lieutenant or Sir.” Grierson began to pace back and forth in front of the group. “I know that all of you are ready to fight here, and, should the need arise, die here for all your friends and family back home. To tell you the truth, I think that’s a damn shame!”
    tab The boys all seemed taken aback at this remark. Anthony and Francis looked at each other: this was the man who was going to be leading them into battle? “That’s right!” Grierson continued. “If it were up to me, none of you would be here right now. You’re too young to be killing people in combat, and you’re too young to be thinking about dying! You should be at home, working with your fathers, making an honest living. Hell, the war has been going on for a hundred years: do you even know what you’re fighting for?” He trailed off as he looked at the boys, all of them flabbergasted by what had been said. “Well, get yourselves some rest and some chow. In four days, we’re going into the trenches. Dismissed.”
    tab “That was quite an interesting speech,” said Francis. Anthony didn’t respond, as he mind began to process what he had been told. Was he really going to die here on foreign soil, at age fifteen? Surely not. He knew people would die, but surely not him. That’s what every soldier there hoped, and prayed for right before they went to sleep: “Surely, I won’t die.”

    tab It was the second day after their arrival in Port Hurmer, and Anthony and Francis were getting to know some of the men who had been in action for a long time. Most of the veterans would tell stories in the mess or the makeshift lounge. But above them all, there was still one more person Anthony wanted to meet.
    tab The guy in question was sitting at the bar in the lounge. He was shorter than most of the people at the camp, but he was stocky, and tough-looking. “Why are you interested in this guy?” Francis asked.
    tab “He is one of Grierson’s troops,” Anthony said loudly above the music in the lounge. “I just want to know a little more about the guy.”
    tab Anthony finally managed to elbow up to the boy at the bar. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen. “Excuse me,” said Anthony, “are you Patrick Henderson?”
    tab The boy turned to look at Anthony and Francis. “Who wants to know?” he asked in a low, gruff voice.
    tab “I’m Anthony Hodgins,” he replied. “I know that you have been serving with Lieutenant Grierson for awhile, and I was wondering what you could tell me about him.”
    tab Patrick reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. “There’s not much to know about Grierson. He’s a man who always spoke his mind. But I guess that’s how he ended up way over here.”
    tab “What do you mean?” Francis inquired.
    tab “Grierson always thought the war was stupid,” Patrick said as he blew smoke. “He would protest in small areas, you know, bars and such. Well, Grierson just kept picking up momentum. Now, this really got the king up in arms. He couldn’t have someone challenging his decree of war, or else he might wind up fighting a war overseas and a revolution at home. So what did he do? He forced Grierson into the service, and sent him way out here.”
    tab “Does he get a lot of trouble for not wanting to be in the war?” Anthony asked.
    tab “No one really cares,” Patrick grumbled. “He holds his own in a fight, keeps his eye for everyone. As long as he does his job, the other soldiers just leave him be.”
    tab “Thanks for the help,” Anthony said with a smile as he started to walk away.
    tab “See you in the trenches,” Patrick said as he waved them away.

    tab And that’s where they met again. Everyone had settled into one of the many interconnecting trenches, and they were waiting for orders. Most slept, as it had been a long march from Port Hurmer, but some were put on guard duty. Francis and Anthony sat together, watching with fascination as Patrick went about cleaning his scoped, bolt action rifle.
    tab “Always clean your weapon when you have down time,” he said as he took out the bolt. “You don’t want your piece to jam up when you need it to kill.”
    tab Not far from where they were sitting, Grierson was looking over a map with a few other soldiers. “He looks so serious right now,” said Anthony, watching as the Lieutenant scanned every inch of the piece of paper.
    tab “He’s deciding where we should go from here,” Patrick said through a brush clenched in his teeth. “We are in one of many interconnecting trenches that run for hundreds of miles all throughout the countryside. From what the Lieutenant told me, the 101st Armor is going to be moving through here soon, and we’re going to ride their coattails east, advancing as we clear out enemy trenches.”
    tab “So we just wait here until we move?” asked Francis.
    tab Suddenly, fifty yards to the left of where the three were sitting, there was an explosion. “Everybody, get up!” yelled Grierson as he grabbed his trench shotgun. The air was alive with the sounds of gunfire, and tracer rounds flew across the no-man’s-land. “Those bastards!” shouted Grierson as he fired the shotgun wildly. “They must have moved back into the trenches we cleared out!”
    tab Anthony, Francis, and Patrick were at the front of the trench, firing at the enemies they could hardly see in the darkness. “Hey, Patrick!” yelled Grierson, “See if you can hit that machine gunner!”
    tab Patrick nodded and stared through the scope of his gun. He waited for several seconds, and then pulled the trigger. “Got him!” he yelled back.
    tab “Fix bayonets and charge!” Grierson roared as he fixed the sword bayonet to his shotgun. Anthony and Francis did as they were told and jumped over the edge of the trench. Someone shot up a flare that illuminated the field in front of them. For the first time, Anthony saw the enemy troops. They wore grey uniforms, bearing the red insignia on their flag. The whole line charged forward, running right into enemy fire. A boy next to Francis fell as he was hit in the chest by an enemy bullet. Neither of the boys noticed: they only saw the enemy.
    tab Anthony reached the edge of the enemy trench and jumped in, thrusting his bayonet forward into one of the soldiers in grey. He screamed unnaturally as he fell to the ground. It was a sound that Anthony would never forget. For the next three seconds (though it felt more like hours), all he heard was that scream, like that was the sound made by a soul leaving a living body. He didn’t notice the gunshots or the melee that proceeded, he just saw the man whose life he just took.
    tab “Are you wounded?” Francis asked. He touched Anthony’s shoulder, snapping him out of his daze.
    tab “What? Oh, yes, I’m fine,” he said hurriedly as he was startled back to reality. Everyone cheered over the victory. That is, everyone expect Lieutenant Grierson.

    tab The next morning was fairly dull. The enemy soldiers were cleared out of the trench and burned in no-man’s-land. It was disgusting work, moving the contorted dead, but they had to do it to prevent the spreading of disease. Grierson was quiet most of the morning.
    tab At noon, several armored cars began to move towards the trench. Everyone was tense when they saw spotted the vehicles until they saw the blue insignia. Grierson walked out to meet the group.
    tab “Where are you guys headed?” the Lieutenant asked, looking at the driver of the lead car.
    tab “We’re heading back to the Port,” he said, massaging his eyes, “we have a lot of wounded that need attention.”
    tab Grierson moved a bit and saw several badly wounded soldiers in the back of the car. “What happened?”
    tab “The Daeridians happened, that’s what! We had a bunch of them pushed back twenty-five miles from here, and before we knew what was going on, there were the tanks. We’re talking at least two fully armored battalions. It was terrible.”
    tab “Do you think they’re blitzing again?”
    tab The driver shook his head. “I don’t know, but for the sake of you and your men, I hope not.”
    tab Anthony and the others watched solemnly as the cars rolled away. “What a bunch of brave souls,” said Francis as the slowly passed into the distance.
    tab That night, as Anthony went to sleep, he had the same reoccurring thought. Surely I won’t die.

    tab The next day it rained. It was just overcast at first, and then it started to drizzle. Before anyone knew it, it had broken into a full out downpour. The boys got out their small trenching shovels and dug into one side of the trench to get out of the rain.
    tab Anthony, Patrick, Francis, and Grierson all wound up in a small, muddy inlet gathered around a lantern that gave off a bit of heat. “Quite some storm, eh Grierson?” said Patrick as he rubbed his hands together.
    tab “Yeah,” replied Grierson musingly as he looked outside, “but not as bad as that storm last March when Trench 891 flooded.”
    tab Patrick chuckled. “I remember that. It was so bad that everyone had to go back to the Port because the rain had ruined all the ammunition.” Both of them laughed heartily, while Francis drifted off to sleep.
    tab “Hello!” they heard some shout outside. “Hello, is anyone there?”
    tab Grierson crawled out of the shelter and returned several minutes later with a messenger. “God love it, its raining cats and dogs out there,” the messenger cursed as he rung out his cap. “The roads are so muddy that my motorcycle broke down and I had to make half the journey on foot.”
    tab “Well, what news have you brought me?” Grierson prodded impatiently.
    tab “There has been a change in plans,” said the messenger. “You aren’t going to advance with the 101st anymore.”
    tab “Did they get sent somewhere else?”
    tab “No, they’re gone.”
    tab Everyone in the shelter suddenly bolted to attention, all staring at the messenger. “The whole 101st Armor got taken out?” Grierson asked in disbelief.
    tab “I’m afraid so. We think they got hit yesterday. About three hours out from Port Hurmer, they were ambushed by a Daeridian anti-tank unit. Heavy mortars, mines several anti-armor cannons: poor boys didn’t stand a chance. Someone in the unit radioed for help, but by the time we got there, the enemy had scavenged everything: tank shells, bullets. Hell, they even siphoned out the gas.”
    tab Anthony watched as Francis began to slowly break down. His older brother was a member of the 101st.
    tab “So, what about our backup?” Grierson implored. “What about the advance?”
    tab “Your orders have changed. You are now to hold this trench system until we can find some other way to push forward.” The messenger nodded and then ran outside into the deluge.

    tab Anthony stayed up late that night with Francis. His friend has been quiet most of the day after hearing the news about his brother’s unit. “Its okay, Francis,” Anthony said consolingly. “Your brother knew his duty, and he knew the risks.”
    tab “I know the duty of a soldier, Anthony,” Francis growled, “and I’m going to make those Daeridians pay for what they did.”
    Neither of them noticed, but Lieutenant Grierson had been listening to them while he pretended to sleep.

    tab Months in the trenches passed slowly. The 250th didn’t see much action as the fall turned to winter, and the snow began to drift down. For the winter holidays, they were sent packages bearing the royal seal of the king. The little golden boxes contained cigarettes, sweets, and even a little extra money. The mood was light among the soldiers, as the boys showed off love letters they had been sent from home and traded gifts. Anthony sat alone as he watched everyone else go about making merriment in the bleak wasteland of war.
    tab “Why the long face?” asked Patrick, whole plodded over the pockets full of cigarettes. “It’s the holidays, and they say the war will be over by New Year’s Eve. Even Francis is having a good time.” Anthony looked to see Francis, who had been sent a bottle of brandy from his parents, drinking with several other soldiers.
    tab “I’ve just been thinking about something,” said Anthony.
    tab “Yeah? What have you been thinking about?”
    tab “I was thinking about a man I killed when we took this trench.”
    tab Patrick sighed. “You and everybody else. A lot of these boys thought about their first kill in this war.”
    tab “Has it ever bothered you to kill someone?” Anthony asked as he looked over to Patrick.
    tab He sighed. “The first time I came over here to Daeridia, I was given this sniper rifle and told to kill a captain on the other side. I kept watching him through my scope, waiting for the right moment. I finally killed him late one night, when he ran out into no-man’s-land to get a body. I couldn’t stop thinking about this guy. So, ever since then, whenever I kill someone, I imagine I’m shooting one of the training dummies back home.”
    tab “Does it help?”
    tab “Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn’t.” Patrick got up and began to walk away. “It’s like Grierson always says. ‘It’s hard to decide which is worse; you watching people die, or you doing the killing’.”
    tab That was the last time Anthony saw Patrick alive. It was the last time he saw Francis smile, and it was the last time he saw Lieutenant Grierson looking out into no-man’s-land, waiting for some sign that the war would end.

    tab It was three in the morning when the first round of artillery fire hit the trenches, jostling Anthony and the others from their sleep. The snow was coming down heavily outside, but everyone could see lights in the distance.
    tab “Those tank battalions must have finally decided to advance!” said Grierson as he pumped his shotgun.
    tab Anthony was hypnotized by the lights, so he didn’t see Francis run up to a water-cooled machinegun that had been brought in, and start to fire a barrage of rounds at the lights. “Die you bastards!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
    tab No one could see a clear target through the snow, so everyone just blankly fired at the lights. The tanks fired a second volley at the trench, causing massive explosions up and down the line. One of the shells landed twenty yards away from Anthony, sending a spray of wood flying into his face as it hit a rotted tree. Anthony saw something lying in mud at his feet after the explosion: it was a sniper scope.
    tab Another shell landed five feet from Anthony, blowing him back to the trench’s wall. His vision slowed, and he couldn’t hear anything. Ahead of him was Lieutenant Grierson, madly firing his shotgun. When it was emptied, he threw it aside and reached for his pistol. There was another blast close by, and Anthony winced from the impact. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Grierson was missing his body from the waist up.
    tab Anthony couldn’t feel his body and thought that he must have been hit somewhere. The last thing he saw was a massive tank and the advancing Daeridian soldiers.

    tab “Well, would you look at that? Hey Charlie, you owe me five marks! I told you he wasn’t going to die.”
    tab Anthony slowly opened his eyes. The light over him seemed so bright, that it took him a minute to get used to it. Beside him stood a scrawny man in glasses and a white, blood-stained shirt. “Is this heaven?” Anthony asked quietly.
    tab “Far from it, my boy,” said the man as he adjusted his glasses. “You’re in the medical tent at Port Hurmer. We didn’t think you’d make it.”
    tab Anthony slowly sat up, watching the room spin around him. He could smell the salt in the air, and he could see the churning ocean out of the front of the tent. He was back at the Port alright, but how had he…
    tab Suddenly, his mind began to race back to that night. What had happened?
    tab “The other soldiers from my unit,” he stammered quickly, “where are they?”
    tab “You’re one of the only ones left,” said the doctor as he looked at the clipboard. “The Daeridians blitzed again, and they were coming in hard and fast. We thought we were going to have to give up the beachhead. I don’t know how we managed it, but we put those bastards into a full retreat. Well, we knew that they couldn’t just sneak all those tanks past your unit, so we quickly organized a search party to go back and look for survivors. You’ve been unconscious for two days, kid.”
    tab Anthony listened closely to what had happened to his friends. Francis managed to hold off the Daeridians, but was eventually overtaken was a swarm of soldiers and stabbed to death with their bayonets. Patrick had been hiding in the old rotting tree while on guard duty, and was killed by a tank shell. Lieutenant Grierson had been hit by a large piece of shrapnel. The medics found his torso about fifty feet from where he had been standing.
    tab “We managed to get four of you that survived,” said the doctor. “Two died in their sleep, so now it’s just down to the two of you.”
    tab Anthony turned around to see another boy, still lying in bed. It took a moment, but Anthony eventually realized who the boy was. He had been a friend of Anthony’s, a boy named Timothy Trencher. Timothy’s father ran a diner right across from the watch-making shop run by Anthony’s parents. Timothy had been a happy child. He was always smiling, and could brighten up any dark situation. Timothy had suffered some serious injuries: most of his body was bandaged up, except for one side of his face, which was badly burned. One of his legs was broken, and one of his arms was gone. Timothy wouldn’t have much to smile about when he came to.
    tab “You’ll get a couple days rest before we send you back out into the trenches with the 252nd.” As the doctor finished talking, Anthony heard the deep sound of s ship’s horn. Taking the rifle that had been laid beside his cot, the soldier got up and went outside. In the distance, Anthony could see a ship, carrying boys that had been like him, excited to fight and be heroes. It was a thought that made his stomach churn.
    tab Anthony still leaned a little to the right when he carried his rifle. He still wasn’t used to the weight of his rifle, but at that point, he knew he wouldn’t ever be accustomed to it.

    tab Anthony shut off his alarm clock and rolled out of bed. If had been fifty years since he had gone into the kingdom of Daeridia. He served his tour of duty, and even made it far enough to become a lieutenant like Grierson had been
    tab In those fifty years, the world hadn’t changed much: the war was still going on, and young men and boys were still being sent to fight. Everyone in the cramped boarding house he occupied listened to the radio coverage of a new shipload of boys being taken to Port Hurmer. It disgusted Anthony more than usual, as it was the fiftieth anniversary of the day that he had left with the 250th to fight.
    tab When he arrived at the family watch-making shop (which he now owned), he saw his few employees, all women, hard at work. He couldn’t get any men; they were all dying in the trenches or too old to work.
    tab Anthony had been a single man for all his life. He didn’t want to marry, and more over, he didn’t want to have any children. Every time he thought about it, it took his mind back to the day when he returned home, the one person of the 250th to get off the ship. He was greeted by the happy, weeping faces of his parents, and the hundreds of other families, whose sons would never return home.
    tab As the sun began to go down, all of his employees left, and he locked up the store. Across the street, he saw old-man Tim Trencher (he no longer wished to be called Timothy) closing his diner.
    tab “Good evening, Mister Trencher,” said Anthony as he walked over.
    tab Tim looked up and managed one of his now rare smiles. “Oh, good evening Anthony. I was just getting ready to have some supper. Care to join me?”
    tab “But of course,” said Anthony as the two walked into the diner.
    tab The two ate quietly. Tim, despite what he had endured during the war, had lived a pretty good life after coming home. He worked at the diner, and eventually became its owner when his dad died. Tim even married and had a son, who was studying to be a doctor. They’d still send him off to Daeridia, but at least there were international laws about medics.
    tab “I tell you, Anthony, everyone in the kingdom is really feeling the weight of the war,” said Tim as he got up and grabbed a bottle of liquor from behind the counter. “The peace talks always break down before they even start. No one wants to trade with us as long as this war is going on. I hear that they might reinstate the draft soon. I tell you, we’ve really fallen on hard times.”
    tab “A war one hundred and fifty years long,” Anthony sighed. “It has already claimed millions of lives. Soon they won’t have anyone to send. It’s only a matter of time before the kingdoms crumble underneath their own weight, and we’ll be there in the rubble.”
    tab “You paint a pretty bleak picture, Anthony.”
    tab “Eventually someone will realize that the weight of war isn’t laid upon the king, but on the people.”
    tab The two old veterans grew silent. Grierson, Patrick, and Francis had already contributed to the weight of the war, and there was no telling how many more would fall before the war would end.

    The End