Forgive Me, Son

Sensitive content: This fictional wartime story touches on emotionally complex themes and reflections on conflict. While not graphic, it may be heavy for some readers.

***

We shall grow fat and merry this night, for the battle is done and we are victorious.

A great cause for celebration, I admit, and my boys earned their moment of revelry. They fought bravely and with so little blood spilled on our side.

But I am too tired for celebration tonight. My body is fighting its own battle against time and old wounds.

In the civilized world, I am a man of only forty-four, but against the fresh-faced boys of Bravo Company, I am ancient.

Tonight, my boys will forget about me and spend their evening talking about sports and sharing tales of their gals back home. And that is okay. They need the peace before we are sent to our next battle.

They saw loss today through the lens of capable warriors raring to save the world. More often now, I find myself praying for them, that they will all live to see the day that they, too, can unnecessarily groan about their knees hurting when the cold sets in, or see the soft faces of their loved ones become roadmaps of every laugh they shared together.

And as a father would, I weep for the murder of their innocence.

Perhaps my prayers are said in vain.

The winter night is close to silent, except for the distant sounds of youthful cheer that fade the further I retreat. The moonlight reflected off the fresh snow aids my path and crunches underfoot as I make my way to the small village chapel.

My boys will celebrate merrily together, as young men do, but I’ll mourn alone.

I don’t have to fight for a seat nearest the center aisle, as my wife often has me do before Sunday morning services back home in our small Tennessee church. She is a holy woman but her love for being the first out of church every Sunday comes across as lustful.

I don’t write to her as often as I did when I first got here two years ago. There’s never good news I have to send her, just reminders that I’m alive. So I often wait for word from her—musings about our two little girls and the innocent trouble they’re always getting into while I’ve been away. The reminders of the birthdays I’ve missed, milestones I’ll never get to properly cherish with my love.

I pull my blanket more securely around my shoulders when a shiver rattles my whole body. Damn this land and its relentless cold.

Looking ahead towards the altar, the Man who bears the thorny crown on His head and the crux on His back stares back at me.

“You say, ‘do not rejoice when our enemy falls’, Father. How do I convince young men with a bloodlust for evil of such an idea?”

There is much evil in this war, but I see it on both sides. I watch young men slaughter each other on behalf of the ideals of old men who are safely tucked away in their beds every night, bellies always stuffed full of a hot meal.

Who’s to say my supposed enemy is any more evil than I am?

The fattened boars in fancy suits, choreographing the demise of innocent young men? Or the snakes with their typewriters that can paint a pretty picture of who I should believe is my enemy?

No.

My enemy isn’t the man pointing his rifle at me from across the battlefield. My enemy has no vessel because I’ll never truly have the chance to bring my boot down upon the necks of the real perpetrators of the endless fighting. My enemy is ideology crafted by evil individuals that turn good men into savages, kind women into vile fiends.

I clasp my hands together and bow my head. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

I have sinned so tremendously. When my time comes to stand at the pearly gates and confront my wrongdoings, I know the gatekeeper will turn me away with an easy shake of his head. And I won’t argue because war makes devils of us all.

But I can pray. I can beg for the forgiveness of my boys that are fighting a battle they truly know so little about.

“Forgive their ignorance, Father. Forgive their youth.”

The creak of the door off to my left is unintentional, as if someone did not mean to make a sound.

The footsteps are quiet, but in the peace of the chapel this winter night, backlit by the embers of battle, they are profound and alarming.

Although my foreign language skills are lacking, asking for forgiveness at the steps of our Father sounds the same in any language. The desperation, the begging and pleading—there’s one dialect when it comes to asking for mercy when you no longer believe you deserve it.

Perhaps the young soldier with the shaggy, blond hair did not see me when he came in.

He drops to his knees in front of the towering crucifix, hands going together and head dropping down. I listen to him quietly make his case.

He’s merely a boy, no older than Hanes—the nineteen year-old private from Nebraska.

“You shouldn’t be here, kid.”

The only evidence I’ve startled him is the flinch he can’t hide. But he doesn’t turn to me. His cries turn desperate and he begins to gently rock, back and forth on his knees, pressing his clasped, shaking hands to his forehead.

I rise from my seat and approach him, brandishing my loyal pistol—a gift from my father-in-law when he learned I was to return to the land that blackened my soul so many years ago.

“Are you alone?” I ask, my tone hardened.

He doesn’t react. No shake of his head, no move to fight me, only the frightened tremble of his thin frame.

I kick the sole of his boot.

He turns and falls at my feet, hands grabbing at my boots, his foreign words a clear cry for mercy.

I kneel down and pull on the back of his coat until he sits up, hands back together, but their purpose is for begging forgiveness from a mere mortal. Which is useless. I haven’t secured my own forgiveness and it will do the boy no good to plead with such a doomed soul.

“You alone?”

More foreign words fly past his lips alongside his sobs.

“Sit down,” I grunt.

He looks up at me, pale blue eyes shining and pleading, a youthful ignorance in his features that weakens me.

The boy hisses in pain when I grip his left arm, and my palm comes away covered in blood.

The enemy’s blood is on my hands.

But this cannot be my enemy…

Kid’s bleeding pretty bad. Could be any number of causes. Razor wire, bullet wound, a poorly aimed bayonet strike. Padding all my pockets, I find the medical kit we’re all meant to keep on us. We’ll be getting supplies hauled in tomorrow afternoon and no one will question why my kit needs restocking after today’s battle.

I kneel and the boy flinches away when I grab his arm again. “Dammit, be still. No one’s trying to hurt ya here.” I hold the kit up, hoping it’ll communicate my intentions because I know I’ll never be able to do so with how little of his language I bothered to learn.

The boy’s gaze switches from the kit in my hand, up to my face. He’s trying to figure out how much he can trust me. If I were a good soldier, the boy wouldn’t be able to trust me at all. Lucky for him, I’ve lost my edge and veered from my immorality.

I inch closer. The boy doesn’t jerk away when I carefully begin to bandage his wound. “You gotta be more careful out there, kid. Don’t ya know there’s a war going on?” I breathe out a gentle laugh, but the boy’s eyes betray his ever present confusion and fear.

When the bandage is secured, I retrieve a bit of bread from my satchel, holding it out to the boy and passing him my canteen. He eats and drinks quickly, returning my canteen with a grateful nod.

“No worries, kid.”

The boy turns back to the altar, bowing his head and closing his eyes, praying to the God I hope is watching over him and every other young man roped into this tragedy of a war.

And I sink down to my knees beside him, mirroring the way he confronts our Father. “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer…”

Because suffer we will. No matter the uniforms we wear or the loyalties we’ve pledged, we’re all going to suffer as so many have before us.

Letting my eyes slip closed, I reach out and take the boy’s hand, cradling it firmly against my chest. Gripping a corner of my blanket, I drape it over his back and wrap my arm across his shoulders, pulling him into my side.

He’s just a kid, dammit. Trying to survive in this hell created by men.

“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer…”

***

I step out of my tent, squinting at the muted sunlight. I wonder if we’ll ever seen the sun again? Or maybe we’re doomed to eternal clouds and gloom.

Shoving a cigarette back between my lips, I pad my pockets for my matchbox. “Shit,” I mutter when I come up empty handed. Must’ve lost the damn thing last night.

Staff Sergeant Donnelly is standing outside his own tent, giving quiet orders to two privates that’re eagerly hanging onto his every word.

Donnelly normally has his lighter handy. If not, I know he’ll have a spare matchbox nearby.

I take off in his direction, not looking into the eyes of any of my boys that pass me by. Today is not a day I can face them. The wounds from our victory are still too fresh.

But two of my boys walking towards me with a triumphant bounce in their steps wave me down. “Hey, Sarge!”

The uniform adorned by the enemy prisoner they’re steering is sharp looking, even with the dried bloodstain on the left sleeve of his jacket.

“Found him sleeping in the chapel, Sarge,” Davis, the private from Georgia tells me with a puffiness in his chest that only saddens me. “Bastard’s a spy. He’d tried hiding his uniform but we found it.”

He and the other private from Donnelly’s company laugh, each giving the boy a good shove.

“Lieutenant Price got us orders on him already, Sarge.”

For the briefest moment, I observe the hollow expression of the young boy standing before me. A spy, I would’ve never guessed. Perhaps I truly don’t believe it either. He doesn’t carry himself in such a manner. More likely a wrong-place-wrong-time situation.

War-time espionage is an accusation that’s near impossible to beat, though.

I’m given the smallest of nods from the boy, dropping his gaze to the muddy ground below. I’d say he’s resigned to his fate, as am I.

Nodding, I tell my boys, “Carry on.”

They shove the boy onward, retreating until I can no longer hear their mutterings and laughter.

Pulling the cigarette out from between my lips, I stuff it behind my ear and drop my head back to face the clouds above, squeezing my eyes shut as the tears slide back into my hair.

“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer…” I whisper my final prayer for the boy. “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.”