I have witnessed

I have witnessed people die, the same people we are celebrating today. I sigh, there’s nothing else I can do. Everyone thinks they are remembering them, but what do they remember? Do they remember how Arthur’s favourite colour was purple? Or how James used to drop his stuff all the time? Or even what colour Tim’s eyes were? No. They don’t remember anything, not the day of their deaths, not all the pain they went through, nothing. This is so frustrating, I should be sitting at home reading, in front of a cosy fire and some hot cocoa. Then I could remember, remember the happy moments, the sad moments, the panicked moments and the deadly moments; yes, I want to remember those too but I can’t even hear myself think in this crowd.

They are all looking at me, this is what I hate the most. Displaying me as a war hero as if I was some trophy. I am no hero, I simply survived. If they wanted to commemorate us they should have simply asked people to pray, this is pathetic. I don’t even know what to do, after all these years I don’t know whether I should smile or pretend like they’re actually doing something nice. I watch the crowd. There’s a teenager that isn’t bothered to look up from her phone, I want to thank her. I hate this, I don’t want the deaths of my friends being celebrated. Oh god, I remember now, their last looks, I’m never going to shake it off. The president is speaking, I wish he would shut his big gob, thanking all the ‘fallen heroes’. What does he know? Nothing, like the rest of them. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, they all know NOTHING. 

I’m angry now, red, hot, raw anger is building up inside of me. I don’t think I can stand here any longer, look at their pathetic faces any longer, just BE here any longer. I wish I had died there sometimes, on those battlefields. I would just be gone then, none of this remembering shit; the dead stay dead, just like Timothy, just like my wife. Everyone I have ever cared about is dead and now here I am, stuck remembering them. I shouldn’t be here, I should be dead, like them. I should be enjoying paradise with Arthur, James, Timothy and my wife, drinking champagne or whatever it is they do up there. They’re singing now, oh god the singing, it’s so loud. Loud, loud, loud, loud. It doesn’t remind me of the singing in the trenches, oh that singing was so nice, so cosy, that singing is what we’re supposed to be remembering. This singing on the other hand, this singing in so far apart, this singing is so stupid; they should sing it with their families, they should sing it in small circles, nice and cosy like we used to sing it, not like this. 

I look at the men beside me, one has a deep scar running down his face, one doesn’t have a leg, he’s stuck in a wheelchair, like me. They have gone through what I have and yet they are singing. Why are they singing? Don’t they remember? Don’t they think of how stupid this is? Of how pathetic it looks? Of how hypocritical it feels? I want to strangle them, to shout at them, to remind them. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is so stupid. Why isn’t anyone realising this? Am I the only one? Even the teenage girl is singing now, I take back my thanks. I mouth along, I can’t bring myself to sing the song, not with these despicable people around me. Alone, I sing. I pretend all of them are still here, the ones I have lost. Even that annoying little kid, the one who was barely 19, he died during the last few weeks of the war, what a shame. I remember him pleading us to save him, his insides spewn all over the grass, it was a pitiful sight. I remember Tim sat next to him, crooning him gently till the light left his eyes and what was left of that short lifetime was a corpse slowly uniting with the ground. I wonder whether the people standing here could ever imagine such a grotesque death. We didn’t mourn him after half burying him, we were too busy trying to stop ourselves from the same fate.

I always wondered about the medics, running around the battlefield risking their lives for others. I could never have done that, I am selfish. As I said: I am no hero. And yet I wonder, would I have been able to watch millions of men die because I couldn’t save them? Could I have been able to croon at them like Timothy had? No, I wouldn’t have dared look at them in the eye, I could have never talked to them, I wasn’t able. I would have probably ended up telling them about how it was good that they were dying, at least they wouldn’t have to suffer up there. Pathetic, that’s what I am, a hypocrite. 

Back to the present day, a woman just fainted, it must be because of the excessive heat, it really is very hot. No it’s not, it’s cold, why do I feel hot? Hot, just like the day Arthur died, that laugh etched eerily on his face, as if he wasn’t lying there with a bullet in his heart, as if my own heart hadn’t sunk to my feet still trapped in the mud. I had just stood there and looked at his eyes, they will haunt me forever, lifeless and forfeit. The world had gone silent for a minute, a full minute that lasted for an hour and then a bullet had come so close to my head I had felt it graze my hairline. I remember the next few moments sometimes, they appear in my dreams: the trench spinning around me, a bomb exploding right on Arthur’s body, flinging it everywhere and stopping me from picking up the pieces. Traumatising, that’s what it was.

Again, back to the cold and the loud people populating this square, we are nearing the end of the event. Thank god, I don’t think I could have lasted another minute. I am properly remembering them now, my friends, my family. I think that when I go home I might just join them, there is nothing left for me here anyway…..