This artwork accompanied a story that won the 2015 Young Australian Writer of the Year Award.
The Lyrics of War by Brianne Gatehouse
The order was given to charge as a voice inside his head repeated over and over, “This is not going to end well.”
John Doe was a young man who was conscripted only six months earlier. He and his younger brother weren’t interested in the politics of this war but saw it as an escape from their dysfunctional family. It was only luck that they were stationed together at Campi Della Morte. The Fields of Death.
Thunder rumbled its way through the shadowy undulating clouds, as the smell of rain filled the air – the sweet, pungent zing lingered in his nostrils. The wind bit through his heavy uniform, chilling his very core. The ice-cold mud underfoot made his legs ache with every step. A shiver went through him, but John was not sure whether it was the biting cold or the panic of what was about to ensue.
Murky surging storm clouds billowed across the sky; the soldiers could feel every shot of thunder through the ground. The war field was chaos – terror and bedlam had taken over. John’s ears were ringing, muffling the screams and commands that filled the air. Corpses were piling, the dead littered the fields, and all he could do was try to find the safest passage for his team – a small group of four: his brother Bill, and two other soldiers they’d become close with during basic training. A tiny gap, what he guessed to be twenty-meters from them, would take them through a dense thicket with just enough coverage to obscure them in relative safety. John made the call. He shouted out to his team to follow, “This way, run!”
Bill was pushed to the back and fell, tripping on the wet ground. Quickly, he pushed himself back upright and began to run after his comrades. Too late. John was screaming, shouting at the top of his lungs, pleading for his brother to sprint faster. His voice had gone croaky and broken, “Billy! Run!”
Repeatedly he screamed. He glared in horror wanting to run to him, grab him, protect him, but it was pointless. A shower of pellets rained down on Billy. He fell to the ground, hard. Shaking with pain, screaming in agony.
John’s world stopped. Reality froze. He could feel arms pull him back as he started to run towards his fallen brother. A million emotions were swirling through his mind; anguish, despair, guilt. All he could do as he was watching his baby brother breathe his last breath was scream his name. Over and over again. The world was spinning. Their eyes locked for a brief second, and he could feel Bill’s sadness, and his forgiveness. Then he stopped moving. His dead eyes locked on John’s, emotionless, blank. The young private was gone, never to come home.
Buzzing filled John’s ears, and the sour bittersweet scent of rain filled his senses. But the only thing he could feel was immeasurable pain in his chest. His heart had been ripped out. It was his fault. His order. He was the reason Billy was gone, forever. He killed his baby brother.
Shaken out of thought, John was shot in the arm. Scrambling out of the way, his senses had gone dead. Numb all over. With blurred sight, all he could focus on was the corpse that lay in front of him. Under his make-do shelter he lay there, shocked to the core. The noise was deafening – screams and gunfire. John couldn’t bear to watch more comrades die, so he laid still - silent, unmoving, bleeding out from several more wounds.
The gunfire stopped. It had been very slowly dying down for what he had thought had been hours. Waiting, wondering if it was just his hearing gone again – or an enemy trick – he decided he had nothing to live for. More than half dead already, he had nothing to lose. John crawled out of his hiding spot to see a sea of the dead. Mounds and mounds of fallen enemies and brothers-in-arms filled the earth. He stared out, frantically looking for a sign of life, but there was nothing. Only death, destruction, desolation. And over what? John couldn’t even think of any real reason thousands of men died that day. Sulphur and ash filled the air, the soot mixing with the blood and mud already caked on his skin. He suddenly heard a crunch of bones from behind him. Excited he turned, a glimmer of false hope flashes in his mind for just a moment before being greeted at gunpoint by three enemy soldiers. Screaming orders at him in a foreign tongue, he slowly raised his arms, ignoring the pain in his side as he did so. The soldiers commence their shotgun opera, cock back their weapons and prepare to fire.
In the end, it’s all the same. Only the names will change.