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The War Is Over

Hi! So this will be my first time posting on this blog and I hope you all enjoy. I have attempted to capture the effects of War from multiple perspectives and will be submitting this as part of my folio to get into Uni.  

Now, this is a very serious topic so this is a quick disclaimer that I do not know what PTSD is really like as I have never experienced it first hand. I wrote this piece after doing a bit of research into the symptoms and reading some other stories and this is entirely my own interpretation. I am not aiming to offend anyone, I just wanted to get this story out there. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION.

Warnings: Death, Mental illness, hallucinations, PTSD, blood.

Words: 1025

The Soldier

The soldier’s hands shake when he cleans his glasses and as he lays in bed he realizes that sleep does not come as easily as death. His ears echo with the devastating blow of lifeless bodies meeting the bloody ground, and every time he closes his eyes he sees nothing but the dark blood of his fellow soldiers, his friends, their corpses now littering the grounds of war. He has lost so much, now there isn’t anything left for him to lose. As he finally commands his eyes to close, deafening gunshots fill his mind and the shouts of generals and colonels boom across the death strewn fields.

Everything is happening so quickly, just as it did on that day. He turns his head. A bullet flies past him. His friend falls. The soldier howls his name, but when his eyes shoot open, he see’s nothing, he is alone, he’s shouting at no one. He can’t move, his shoulders shake, panic and sweat suffocate him but he still can’t get his legs to move. He hears the booming music coming from the apartment next door. He knows that the deafening blasts are not from the same source as those who cut down his friends, but he can’t help but squeeze his eyes shut as he lay, paralysed by his own memories as they pound through the thin walls in his apartment complex. The fear in his chest rips through him like a bullet as he tries to move his legs. He is once again, powerless. 

As his breathing slows, and the images in his head fade away into the dark air in his small room, he finds the strength to roll onto his side, tensing against the restraints of a phantom pain. Most days, the weight of what the troops saved isn’t anything at all compared to the crushing pressure of the things they sacrificed. The softness of the soldier’s bed was a constant reminder of all those who now lay in the cold, hard dirt. Those who didn’t make it home. Those with more courage and skill than he ever had. 

The man who survived is now the man who cannot stand to. 

The Nurse

The nurse’s hands shake when she pulls her hair up into a ponytail. She wears gloves but it still feels as if blood soaks her calloused palms. After the surgery, she stands and scrubs her hands raw until she is alone in the room, the tips of her fingers wrinkled under the heavy stream of water. The tap automatically turns itself off again, and she finally allows it to stay off. She is staring at her hands, certain they are still tainted by red, whilst in anyone else’s eyes they were as clean as they were ever going to get. After the War, when she arrived home, she was labelled a ‘hero.’ She heard that word so often she began to despise it. When they heard it, they thought of the people she had saved, the hearts she restarted and stitches she’d sewn. When the nurse heard it, she thought of the ones who now lay in their graves. The men and women that laid sick on their stretchers. The blood that covered her uniform and the blank eyes of the dead. When she heard the word ‘hero,’ she wished she could join them.

She drove home early in the morning; the sun had not yet come up and the wind was the only traffic she could hear. she gazed lazily at the mountains in the distance and they looked as if they breathed as the trees atop them shook in the breeze. Her eyes drifted back to where her fingers rested on the steering wheel and the car squealed to a stop as she saw that once again, her hands were coated in red. They shook as she parked the car crookedly on the side of the highway. She is expelled from the car and she falls onto her knees as the nurse desperately rubs her hands on the frosted grass in a feeble attempt to scrub the blood from her hands. Her frantic movements come to a halt as all traces of the blood disappear and she falls, her back against the cold black car. She does not feel like a hero. 

The war may be over, but nobody has won. 

The Widower

The war made many orphans, and so many of them pass through his doors. He keeps them open, never wanting a child to be without a home, without somewhere to belong. His wife had always planned for them to have two children of their own, she had planned a life with him, but now that she was gone, he had no chance of that life. They had bought a home together, hoping to restart their life when she returned from the war, but they forgot that their lives would not pause while they were apart. He lived on, never hit by the reality of war until the day she was taken from him, torn from his world, their memories the only thing that kept her alive. When he found out what had happened; that she had been in a car that drove over an IED, that her body had been torn apart, in the middle of nowhere, with no one to help – his reason to live died with her.

When he realised how many others in the world had lost someone, he found his reason to go on. The house that was supposed to be theirs, turned into the home of many. He opened his doors to anyone who had lost a loved one, and cared for the children who were left alone.

All will never be well again. Not for anyone who seeks refuge in this dark house. But perhaps, it’ll be a little bit better. A little bit easier when they are together, if the soldiers, the nurses, the widowers, the orphans work hand in hand to help one another. 

The war is well and truly over, but a new battle emerges in its devastating wake – the battle to live.