English Assignment:

[Sillyhed2000]

In english our assignment was to write a creative short story (600-800 words in length) to show what we thought to be the 'real' Australian identity; whether it be a dominant view or an oppositional view. We had to do this against the context of war. This is what I came up with; it may not be as familiar a scene to non-Australians, but they should still be able to get it.

 

NB: This is not what I construe to be the real Australian identity, I was just bored of the stock-standard Gallipoli tales.

 

 

I crouch here with my gun in my hands and my heart halfway up my throat, beating out a tune in 4/4 time, and I wonder how many people over that wall want me dead. It’s nothing personal; that’s completely understood. However, whether it’s personal or not doesn’t change the fact that they want to hurt me really, really badly.

 

I’m a soldier, a digger, an ANZAC through and through.

 

The trench is only about a metre deep, and if I had a death wish I’d be standing at 1.6 metres tall. Rather, I’m crouched with my gun in my hands and my heart halfway up my throat and it does a somersault somewhere around my Adams apple as the piercing shriek of a whistle reaches my ears.

 

There is a terrible roar as the men lined up for metres upon metres either side of me place their guns on the top of the trench in front of them and hoist themselves over, running to preserve their right to live. It is a terrible roar that has still not left my ears; it is the roar of thousands of men running headlong into the grim reaper’s scythe, symbolized by a hail of airborne bullets.

 

In response, the machine guns screamed back. A high-pitched, wailing scream that pierced the air, the soil, and men’s torsos as it cut down ranks upon ranks of human flesh in its wake. I still hear it drift back from the front lines every so often and wonder why I did it, and why indeed they are doing it.

 

I was one of the lucky ones; I got five metres before my legs were riddled with messengers of death slicing through my skin, bone, and muscle and causing me to trip face-first into the side of ANZAC #8394. Bless his soul, whoever the hell it was. His memory lives on with the blood which is now matted in my hair, transferred from his corpse to mine by a particularly vindictive cluster of bullets.

 

Probably fired from the same gun that turned my feet into stinking lumps of misshapen meat riddled with shrapnel. Probably the same gun that forced me to claw my way, hand-over-hand back the way I’d come and fall face-first in the most undignified manner possible into the trench I had been standing in a few minutes earlier.

 

This was the War.

 

Now I lie in a miscellaneous medical tent, a casualty to someone else’s cause and taken off the ration list because I’m too godforsaken to have the privilege. I lie here and play the counting game; for every shriek, roar, and scream I hear I count; one-hundred men dead. Two hundred. Three hundred. The record so far is six hundred in an hour; big numbers in big kid’s games.

 

I lie here and wonder; am I the only one who sees what’s happening here? The Turks are dug in too well. We have single-shot rifles with pointy implements on the end; they have high-powered automatic machine guns fed by belts of ammunition hundreds of rounds long.

 

The “Abandon hope past this point” sign dug into the front line of trenches is so obvious yet so sadly necessary.

If we succeeded from the British Empire years ago, why are we fighting their war? This is because this is who we are; we think not, we hesitate not, we live only to serve the mother country. Australians may be in the front lines, but it’s the British who are calling the shots; it’s their commanders who are sitting in the tents on the beachfront, where a mere phone call could transfer hundreds of men from this world to the next.

 

The electronic data was sent through the trenches via electrical cable installed several days prior. It was received by another phone and transformed into sounds deemed understandable by the human ear, which was then carried into a grunt’s ear and deciphered by their brain. This formed logical thoughts.

 

Yet the Australian whose job it was to relay this information relayed it so well that he alone sent hundreds of men to their deaths. We’d seen how effective those fully-automatic machine guns were earlier that day, and even in the darkness the fires from the hundreds of cigarette butts burnt bright across No Man’s Land. They’d cut us down in an instant.

 

So why the hell were we charging?

Why the hell did that man send his fellow Australians out there, knowing full well the effectiveness of the Turkish defence?

Why the hell did I obey it?

 

To serve the mother country and to thoughtlessly bow to those above me, yet another drone in the British hive.

 

I’m a soldier, a digger, an ANZAC through and through.

 

Yet to hand it in or to title it.

Edited February 23, 2006 by Sillyhed2000

[Mr Killer]

It is well written. I like it. If I were your English teacher I would give you an A.

[Mav.]

Very nicely written indeed. I don't think there is anything I would change .

 

Oh and what year are you in?

[Sillyhed2000]

Thanks for replying (this backalley of the forums seems pretty inactive ), I'm in grade 11. Teacher says it's the only creative writing task this semester though

[Mav.]

Thanks for replying (this backalley of the forums seems pretty inactive ), I'm in grade 11. Teacher says it's the only creative writing task this semester though

The less the better, I reckon .

 

 

[Mr Killer]

Teacher says it's the only creative writing task this semester though

That's the good thing isn't it?

 

By the way, what city you from? It's been bugging me for ages.

[Sillyhed2000]

In the interest of not getting raped, I'll PM it to you. I'd hardly call it a city

 

EDIT: I titled it "Memories and Recollections of War: A Quick Romp in Turkey" and added "The truth is known as cynicism by those who do not possess it" as an unknown quote at the beginning before the story starts. Slack for updating the first post.

Edited February 28, 2006 by Sillyhed2000