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Just Another Day On The Job
By Brigham
Since I was a kid, I wanted to join the military. I grew up in the countryside and learned how to use a gun from my dad when he took me hunting for my eighth birthday. He wanted me to join the army too. He always played soldiers with me and told me stories of when he was in the military. One day, Dad came home with a BB gun. A gun just for me. It was a model army gun with green and grey camouflage, a long barrel, and a large cylinder at the end. We’d spent that crisp, sunny afternoon in the backyard shooting empty soda cans off the fence until Mom found out and told me to go inside. She was never too thrilled about either me or my Father being in the army, and she made Dad return the gun to the store. In all fairness, he did return the gun, but when he came back, he gave me another gift: an army pistol. The pistol was entirely green with a similar long barrel and a small scope on top. Most importantly, it was easy to hide. I practiced my aim by shooting pinecones and apples in the woods every day. I got really good at it too, and always made sure I kept the gun hidden from my mom. I knew she wouldn’t approve of me having it, but it was the only way I could feel closer to my dream.
Eventually, I graduated high school and then I went straight to the army. The commanders were strict about every order they gave us down to the most minuscule details. A made bed didn’t have any wrinkles, a bad push-up cost you ten more, and a missed bullet earned you extra duties for the day. So, I strained my body and mind past their limits to improve and meticulously followed every order I was given. I made sure I was the best I could be so I would be as useful as possible if I was sent to fight. I also made some of my closest friends during my training: Charlie, David, and Jacques. I spent almost every second of every day with these guys, and without them, I wouldn’t have become nearly as good a soldier as I was. Our competition drove us to put every last drop of our efforts into our training, and in doing so, we bonded very closely. We were in it together, and that was what we relied on to improve.
Those times were the brightest of my career, but they didn’t last for long. By July of 1940, the guys and I were officially commissioned in the Royal Canadian Regiment, and we served overseas for a while. Although I spent years training for combat, no drills or simulations could have prepared anyone for that nightmare of a battlefield. Artillery shells whizzed through the air like massive, deadly footballs before touching down and bursting into terrifying orbs of flame and flying debris. Gas swirled up without warning in a deadly race to reach your face before your mask. In battle, there was never a calm moment, but we fought nonetheless. We fought for ourselves, each other, our families, and anything else we could use as motivation to keep pushing onward. I missed my family more than I ever missed anything in the world, but I knew deep in my heart that I had to keep pushing myself. I wasn't any use to anyone if I didn’t push myself to be better.
Then, during a raid, Charlie and I found our squad pinned behind cover, near a gunners’ nest. Bullets ripped through the air, letting out energetic hums before quickly chipping into the concrete of our slowly disintegrating cover wall and releasing violent cracks on impact. Knowing we had to take down that nest, I ran out from behind the wall, throwing a grenade on my way to the nearest piece of new cover. It exploded just a few seconds later, launching small chunks of stone in every direction and reducing every enemy to dust. I raised my arm in celebration before I was greeted with a sharp burning pain in my bicep and the overwhelming urge to sleep. When I came to, I was in the sick bay with bandages tightly wrapped just above my right elbow and my friends by my side. Since I was no good at fighting with a bullet hole in one arm, they sent me home for a few months to recover. For the first time since I could remember, I was able to embrace my beaming father and weeping mother and reassure them that I was okay. I was joyously beside myself to see my family again, yet I knew something was off. As much as I wished I could stay with them, I knew I belonged fighting, back out there with my friends.
The moment my doctor cleared me to return to battle, I gave my parents my love and went overseas to rejoin the effort. It was just supposed to be another day on the job, but when I walked into the base entrance, I was greeted with enthusiastic greetings and energetic cheers from the soldiers. Through all the commotion, I managed to roughly make out how our troops were able to launch a front and take back some land without the nest in their way. Was this it? Was this what I had worked so hard for? Yes. All the training, all the fighting—it all led to this moment where I stood as a proud hero, surrounded by my celebrating peers. At this moment, I knew everything I had aspired to do since I was a young child had been accomplished. But it didn’t stop there; I was also promoted to captain and assigned a lead role in the P.P.C.I. Although it meant leaving my friends for the time being, I had no choice but to accept the position if I wanted to keep bettering myself.
A few days and some teary goodbyes later, I was in a tank on my way to the new base with some of its newer members. On the second day of the drive, I met Sam, who had joined the army just a few months earlier and had yet to fight a single battle. He asked me what serving was like, and when I started telling my war stories, he couldn’t get enough of them. His eyes gleamed with wonder and hope that he might one day find his own stories of how he helped people. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that at one point things just blended into a giant blur, and every day just became another day on the job. I wish he had the chance to experience that—experience anything more than he got to, but at that moment, the universe was turned upside down and fire engulfed our world.
A German fighter plane dropped a cluster bomb directly onto our vehicle, turning the roof above us into razor-sharp shrapnel and flooding our vehicle with relentless heat. When I finally made sense of everything, the first person I saw, if you could call him that anymore, was Sam. The right side of his body was burned to a crisp, and he was covered in lacerations from his lifeless eyes down to his melting rubber boots. Then, I noticed my own injuries. The left side of my body was completely numb, my nerve endings burned so thoroughly that they couldn't process the immense pain I should have felt. My green uniform was shredded into ribbons, and blood sputtered out from where chunks of molten steel had lodged themselves in my chest. I missed my parents and my friends. I wished I could have looked them in the eyes one last time and told them how much they meant to me. I wished I could have lived on to help more people. I still don’t understand why we died that day; the plane could have easily flown right by without noticing us, but that isn’t relevant. In the end, it was just another day on the job, a day that happened to be my last.
As a soldier, you go into every day knowing it could be your last, but all that matters to me is that others take my place. As long as there are people out there who push themselves and others to achieve their true potential, there is still hope for this war-torn world.