Leith Academy

"Thinking Differently" by Lewis Murray

I suddenly woke up, with absolutely no idea of how long I had been ‘out’. There was a silence clearer and quieter than any I had ever known. Is it possible that I still be on the battlefield? I sat up rubbing my eyes and trying to remember what had happened. When my vision at last came into focus it was something I was never going to forget. The silent battlefield that had been host to the battle of many and as far as I was aware held but one survivor. This was meant to be the war which that upon victory would finally bring us the freedom we want to live but had been a conflict which had led us to our demise. I awoke to a field that at a time might have been the brightest of green but was now and forever in my memories always be rouge red. But the grass could not be seen for the victims of the war that had ended not in triumph but in sorrow for those lost, on both sides of the field. And when a single second is taken to think about whom I had lost I remembered how I had come to be in this situation.

I was from Scotland. I discovered then that wherever I was bore no resemblance to my place country of birth. It was all because of the recruitment officers who had gotten all uniformed up to come to talk to us during that at the time what seemed like a normal school day it was as if they had the strange and weird ability to charm and in a way hypnotise us into believing that we would have adventures, that we would be heroes, I now realise that one thing they never really said…..they never did promise we would come back. I got myself up and was immediately alerted to a sharp searing pain coursing all through my body. I walked onward slowly through the field of bodies, trying hard as I could not to tread on any of them as if they still felt pain.

Then a mournful sight lay before me that I was not to ready to behold for on the ground was the bravest soldier I knew …..’had known’. His name was Sam Frost, thought the face I stared at bared no resemblance to my once best friend. His face was stricken with an eerie permanent stare as if still with the living. I knelt down silently crying and closed his eyes, as if he had now been relieved of his duty. I stood up still looking at my friend’s body thinking about how even though he had died in battle he has still earned his peace. I turned to walk away. Suddenly I began to remember more of what happened. I had been in the bunker scared for my life and wishing I was home or that I would at least survive. Our commander told us this was the last battle but in war it seems that everyone is saying it is the last battle but it never is and never would be for me alone, but the ground was shaking, the enemy was nearing our location and I was holding a gun that of which I had absolutely no idea how to use. Just then the door to our bunker hideaway was blown up and in rushed the enemy all with their guns and helmets ready to kill anyone in the room. But there was something different about this enemy that the ones from normal wars these enemies don’t shoot on sight they make you do it yourself and as I stood there my best friend at my side and a gun in my hand I said the words I never thought I would, “Who do I shoot to live?” the noise of voices turned silence, all eyes in the room immediately on me some stricken with shocked some looked so hurt some were glaring.

Then an enemy soldier came up to me with a stride as he walked and a glare that was meant just for me. “That one, kill him and you may live” he said pointing his long muddy hand at Sam who was stricken with terror that could only in seen in a person in his situation and then I did the most shocking thing I will ever do. I just shot. That was it I just shot him there and then. That was when I woke up in the lifeless battlefield and suddenly realised that the war was not over; I had died. And my final reward was to remain in the battlefield of the lost, forever more to live lift in hell on earth. And then I did the most sorrowful think I will ever do. I just walked on.

And while I walked on, my nightmare as my domain I thought of the evils man has done, is doing or even will do and I couldn’t help but realise, when their evils are done, the thought that they each must think, with a tear in their eye those men must all think “what would have changed….if I’d been thinking differently?”