Aftermath

The peace found in the ruins of a battlefield is unlike any other.

The aftermath of a battle is the antithesis of itself. War is chaos. A cacophony of sounds barraging one’s earlobes from every direction. The reverberating clang of metal as two bloodied swords strike, the erupting shudder of a cannon-shot rippling through the air, the commanding shouts from generals as they attempt to raise their voice above the other competing sounds with fail, each sound more terrifying than the last. The smooth sound of a blade across a slitted throat, the harsh stomp of soldiers’ footfalls that rings out like drumbeats, and the echoed screams and gurgles faded to be the last sound of so many lives as they perish on the battlefield, all quieted in the aftermath.

While one may see only horror when faced with the bloodsoaked earth, covered in the frozen faces depicting the fearful last moments of each accidental corpse and budding hero, I see peace. The liquid courage of heroism is poison to the blooming soldier’s roots. For while they soak up lies and nationalism they are deprived of light and nourishing soil found in their homeland. This clarity, this truth, cannot be found in the tumultuous confusion of the battlefield. No. Only in the aftermath can such enlightenment be obtained.

I am not immune to the opinions of my comrades who believe me strange and heartless for finding tranquility in a graveyard. They are young. They know not how to cope with the fracturing of one’s psyche. When they lose the granules of hope they cling to along with their own blood, they will break. While the cracks of my mind show, they hold strong with the adhesion of steadfast ideals and a mind that has weathered the worst.

I no longer cry when death befalls my comrades. I shed a tear when they enter the forces, for I know they are already doomed. If not to die as a false martyr, then to fade away slowly as their sanity slips from them like sand in an hourglass. Perhaps mine will too, in time. Perhaps my mind is already lost. Regardless, in the moments of peace and quiet when I can be alone with my thoughts in the field of death the waters of my mind are truly calm.

I do not claim to have solved the mental plague brought upon me by war. When I close my eyes, I still see corpses. When I plug my ears, I still hear screams. I am simply blind and deaf to their pleas. They ask me questions and accuse me of failing them. They ask me why. They ask me to save them. But there is no one to save. We are already lost the moment we sink our boots into the muddy war fields.

I need not remain in the forces. I have done enough service for my country that I can return home if I wish. Though I do not. I am a sailor who has found a home at sea. I am forever called by its expanse and forever frightened by the shore. My identity which has been molded and forged in cannon-fire and bloodcurdling screams was not made to adapt to civilian life, just as wild beasts struggle in civilization: untamed, unfettered, and unadapting. But civilian life forces the wild beast and me to adapt. To tame the monster within is not to evaporate them from the cool waters of consciousness, but rather sink it to the depths of the unconscious. It lingers and grows, spreading like a disease as it consumes mind and spirit from within while we lie to ourselves on the surface. Our kind was not to be tamed, shackled, or adapted. The path of a killer is one that has no return route.

So here I stay on a blood-soaked sea. While I have no true companions on the waters, for I know their fate will make for no lasting attachments, I will find no more success on the land. Why then do I care to persist? I can hear the oblivion calling, louder than the screams of my comrades, more expansive than the ocean. I listen to it, considering its offer, but never take it. Perhaps one day, death will finally claim victory over me, but persistence is all I have. Persistence to keep my mind from fracturing, persistence to remain in the forces, and persistence to resist death. That is what drives me forward.

Will I ever return to the land? I ask myself that question each day foolishly hoping to have more of an answer than the last time I asked it. I do not fear violence, madness, or even death. Though the thought of returning to civilization sends a shiver down my scarred back. Here I can only hurt those whose lives are already forfeit, like mine. But there, there my changes can hurt those who still have a future.

Being oneself alone is better than pretending with another. I will always be forced to put on a false face, to pretend like the war was a past relationship that I can laugh over at its conclusion. No. The war follows me wherever I go.

The laughter of ordinary folk will be as distant as my fellow solder’s screams. I will be as indifferent to their smiles as I am to corpses. I will be as valuable to civilization as the dead are to me: a reminder of the horrors of war, nothing more.

Age and experience change a person, and perhaps it will change me still. But I think not. I will continue this dance with oblivion. Though every morning still, I will ask myself if I am ready to return to the land, each day fruitlessly hoping for a different answer.

Either way, I will be alone, isolated either by difference or distance. At least this way I can embrace the soldier I have become and enjoy these precious moments of calm in the wastes of a battlefield.