it's been awhile...

I've been frustratingly pissed and stoned and headached and whatever shitness that can disrupt your system the past day or so. I really don't have any inspiration to blog anymore. Yeah yeah, said this a hundred million times divided by a hundred million multiplied by seven. Meh.

I really have nothing insightful to say, or do. It's been a fucking corrupted week this time round, and will continue to be so for the next 3 days. Details include the below:

~Yearbook cover that SHOULD have been done by the stupid design department, but they are stupid.

~Formal lab reports. Meh.

~The doom-ed piano exam.

~My corrupted headaches.

~My seemingly okay mornings followed by dementedly destroyed afternoons.

Meh.

Just read the stupid second story for the MPH competition. I really can't be bothered anymore. The only way I'll feel anymuch better is if I win the competition, or if Evon deigns to attach her face to mine lip to lip for a significant amount of time. Meh.

Whose War?

World War II. Is that what they’re calling it? Curious. As far as I know, only the grown-ups have any argument with themselves. We young ones are happy just to be left alone. We are absolutely content in our silly games, foolish pranks, schoolwork, crushes, and even the mostly nonsensical complaints of the older folk. A childlike manner, quite befitting of children. Who says the world is at war? Is it those big people in government offices? Or those noisy dictators on their high wooden podiums screaming at crowds? Or those steely generals barking orders at lowly foot soldiers? I have no idea why they are pulling us into their stupid fights. It’s not as if we ask them to join in our games. I don’t see why they have to.

These senseless arguing defies logic. At least, they defy mine. Worse than children they are. Which may explain why they get us to do their work these days. Instead of playing, we work in factories to make guns, tanks, planes. Instead of learning, we go into battle, with guns, to shoot other children who should also be learning. Instead of being children, we are forced to become adults. And it’s a wonder why anyone would want to grow up. We have enough childish quibbling as it is without having to waste a lot of time making things to fight with.

Grandma always said I thought too hard. She said I was putting this too simply. It was too complicated for a simple mind like mine, she said. Mother doesn’t say much about it. Father can’t say anything about it. He’s dead. Stupid grown-ups. It is as simple as a bunch of overly arrogant playmates not willing to play properly. Then they fight. Then they get other people into the fight. Then there’s an all out brawl. It’s absurd that they teach us to play nice, but don’t do it very well themselves. The only one who agrees with me is the strange old man who lives around the corner. Well, lived. He died in the V2 bombings. I never knew his name.

The soldiers come to bring me to the training camp. There’s nothing left to think about. It’s not as if I have a choice on the matter. If I did, I would be sitting at the junction of Killiger Street and Newton Avenue, gazing at the girl who helped her mother in the candy shop. I heard that her family made it safely to America. I don’t think my family will be so lucky. They haven’t come for us ever since our area got hit by the V2s. Well, except when they felt like they needed me. They need children to fight their wars for them. How silly.

The training in the camp is not difficult. No more difficult than trying not to break down crying seeing another friend lying dead in the street. The rubble and the smoke and the regular explosions tend to numb you after awhile. I didn’t feel a thing when I saw the strange old man from around the corner lying lifeless among the rubble of his house. Not even the news of Father’s death did anything. And the training in the camp is hardly anything, in scope of everything that I’ve been through already, although the guns they give us are strangely familiar to me. As are the uniforms. Of course. Father used to wear them.

The commandant tells us that we will be sent to some strange place that I’ve never heard of before. The younger boys are crying at night in their bunks, though they try to hide it. I hear the quiet hush of the older boys in their bunks, traumatized to silence. I hear the older men speak in whispered tones about sweethearts and newly wed brides. Late into the night I hear them toasting with the cheap ale that the camp rations out. But I cannot hear my heartbeat. I cannot sleep, even though I’m exhausted from the day’s training. Am I afraid of dying? Perhaps. I cannot tell anymore. Thoughts of dying are constant companions.

We land at the field camp, not too far from the battlefield. The camp chaplain speaks to me. He tells me not to be afraid. I tell him that I stopped being afraid a long time ago. A tear runs down his wrinkled face. His eyes are filled with sorrow. In an almost silenced whisper, he said that boys were not meant to fight men’s wars. I walk away. He sits there on a wooden crate, containing the guns with which we would kill other young boys.

The mess bell sounds. We are given what I suspect will be our last meal. One of the veterans, his name I do not know, he hands me a letter. From London, he says. I open it. It seems that my home has been hit by the Luftewaffe. Everyone is dead. He offers his condolences. All the more reason to go kill those Nazis, he says. I do not think boys my age flew the planes that dropped those bombs. No, it was grown men who did it. It was grown men who ordered it.

We are lined up for the charge. Why they put boys in the vanguard, I do not know. But some of the veterans seem friendly. They willingly join us in the front line. The others, I’m not too sure. They seem to prefer to be backup fire. As we lead the charge, the world seems to delay. Everyone is moving so slowly. I run towards a monstrous tank, a grenade in hand. I lob it, and feel a sharp pain in my right. I have been shot. Twice. As my eyes go dark, I hear a deafening explosion. A cheer goes up among our men, but they do not see me fall.

My name is John Doe. I am 16. Not that anyone will remember. Silly adults.

Jin out.