The 226th Day
Part
III
Christmas, New Year and my birthday past in a
blur, I didn’t care for any of them. They didn’t
matter. I sunk into a sort of depression, wanting desperately to
go and avenge my best friend and all the others who had died. I
only ate because I didn’t want to waste food, and I rarely
went outside anymore, I hardly talked to anyone. Manic energy was
building up inside of me and my headaches were returning,
nosebleeds making my face feel dirty. Every night, when the clock
chimed twelve, I would tick off another day from my calendar,
another day I was wasting instead of fighting the Germans.
Rations were cut short, and seeing my parents getting thinner
made my depression worse. By the 276th day of my
misery, I was disgusted by myself.
I almost cheered when the first bombs hit our street on September
the 7th, 1940.
It was terrifying, but it was something. It made the war feel
less distant, as though I could do something to help. I recall
first a massive tremor running through my house and every fibre
of my being. Shaking soon followed, along with the
loudest BANG I have ever heard. The
silence which followed was deafening, as though every single
thing to live on Guelder Street had been eradicated and turned to
nothing in mere seconds. Smoke filled my lungs as another bomb
hit and I was strangely pleased my parents had gone shopping as
the public bomb shelters were better than ours. Another tremor
ran through our home and through the smashed glass in my window I
could see flames pouring out of Mrs Hopkin’s upstairs
window, which seemed to be the only part of her prim and proper
house still partially standing. Beams in our roof were cracking
and I hauled myself to my feet, aiming to run to our shelter. I
gripped the door handle and wrenched it open, ignoring the
burning sensation on my palm as it closed around the usually cool
metal handle. That was my first mistake and when the door opens,
I was faced with a mouthful of black soot and flames which looked
like they’d come straight from hell. My second mistake was
running through said flames rather than turning around and climb
out of my reasonably safe window (something I had done hundreds
of times before when sneaking out before tea or after my bedtime
to see Marty and Arnold). I felt my feet go out from underneath
me on about the third step from the bottom, although my brain was
fuzzy from inhaling so many fumes and my eyes were burning due to
the heat radiating from the fire onto my eyelids.
War is like a beautiful lady, she excites you and glorified as
she is and naïve as you are, you don’t listen to what
is inside you, or around you telling you no, until
her long slender fingers are wrapped firmly around your waist and
she’s dragging you to her depths, where it is unlikely you
will escape unscathed. She comes in many forms, varying from
personal demons to physical ones. She is thousands of years old
and has destroyed millions of lives and yet no-one truly
understands her until they’re in her grasp and trapped
forever. She is an avoidable, unnecessary foe, if you make the
correct decision
Death is like a clear pool, deep as the ocean but clear right to
the very bottom, no secrets or hidden lies. Everyone dies. He is
like a friend in the darkness, a hand offering to lift you from
the pits of War, whether it is your own or a full scale World
War, which is destroying you and everything around it bit by bit.
He is a painful truth, unavoidable, though not necessarily
forever.
As I reached the end of my old street, only one though passed
through my mind.
For all I miss life, I am glad I got to die on home soil, unlike
so many.
