My Last Words…

So these will be my final last words. They won’t be recorded; they won’t be repeated in history as in anyway being famous and they will never know of my story beyond the walls of this…prison in which I have kept my own counsel for the past five days. I will say to you now as they offer me a blindfold in which to avoid the staring eyes, deep blue on one, so blue that I could swim and frolic amongst the stars that are reflected on the top as they too dance and shout with a hope of the future to come. They have my future deeply locked within them, he or one of the others will take my life and extinguish it forever. Not for any other crime except for not wanting to fight anymore.

Two people so alike, not quite identical twins, after all one was a boy, Nicky, the other a girl, Nicola. So alike, so comfortable in each other’s company that their mother sometimes couldn’t tell them apart, she also felt left out, she felt as if the twins could have lived without her. That they were so wrapped up in each other’s thoughts and ways that her life, her own sweet precious life was of little consequence. That is not the case of course, the twins loved their mother so much…I am sorry Father that is not the point of my…confession, and I see dawn approaching. You see Father War is its own story, it makes heroes out of men that in all likelihood would have not have even amounted to anything apart from being pillars of the community, respected men, home with their children, teaching them how to play and loving their wives. War is its own breed of insanity, like a good book it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It throws a different view in occasionally but that is always overridden, erased, forgotten and left to die alone. War always wins.

The reason why of course they couldn’t be told apart, without resorting to the task of undressing in the dark and away from other prying eyes was that Nicola made herself look like Nicky, she cut off her hair, she burned all her nice clothes, the dresses and the skirts, the bows that kept her well-combed hair in place and everything that ever associated her with having been born a girl. The distress it caused her mother…well there again hangs another tale.

The reason wasn’t because she wanted to be a boy or seen as equal in anybody eyes, the village gossip may well have had great fun and enjoyment out of that, oh she wanted to be a boy, no she didn’t, she wanted her brother to survive.

War, it makes heroes out of those that never intended to be, the sound of gunfire, the swift punishment that visits anybody on the frontline day after day should they just happen to get to close to one, the gunfire in which is not aimed at you personally but because people are scared, they are being told every day that somehow that I and many like me are their enemy. War, it’s a funny game to play, we dodge one bullet but we don’t get a chance to savour the relief of being alive when another bullet comes our way. Never one to believe that the enemy actually has a bullet with your name upon it, I stand here talking to you Father with undisputed knowledge that somebody just over there, somebody who wears the same uniform as I, is the one whose bullet takes the name of Nicky with it.

Nicola was a sweet girl, I miss her every day. I left her though the day I decided to save her. Life was so much easier for me to enlist, Nicky, the toast of the village, the short cropped hair, the good looks and charm to be anybody’s friend. Nicola was equally charming but living slightly in her brother’s shadow, never being allowed to come free on her own accord. She had to run away to get a life, I miss her even here a few hundred miles away from home, the sound of the odd bullet at night a constant reminder of what we both gave up to keep the family name intact. The truth of War is that it makes good men desperate and the women left behind to shoulder the burden, the weight of society thrust in amongst the seemingly impossible. Women do though, they carry on, they have another master in the house, the constant companion of thought, of worrying 24 hours a day and then overtime, unpaid and alone. War, the true leveller of equality.

Dawn, you can almost hear the rifles being cocked, checked, primed, checked again. I wonder if the men out there are nervous. I was told by one friend who came to say goodbye that a few had asked not to be pulled for this duty, They were of course going to be denied, save end up in the same space that I know occupy listening to the sound of daybreak and one last word or two with you Father. I smile at that thought, I don’t know if you can see that on my face here in the gloom but I smile. Perhaps it might save the enemy from constantly having to fire at them. Better a friend takes your life, better somebody, a companion, a comrade or even somebody you once thought of with high esteem and love take your life than a perfect stranger who cannot convey in the same language what they about to attempt to do. The taking of one’s life for some reason is a sin is it not, even murder is against the Ten Commandments and yet somehow in times of warfare, in times of outrage between nations, man gets to fire a bullet at somebody and knowing that if they have found their target, that if blood rain down around them and that one less soldier on the opposing side is there to live then it all gets absolved, by Government, by church and by family. I was only doing as I was ordered. I no longer wanted to obey that command; I wanted to lay down my gun.

So I did, I refused to fight anymore, I wanted to see Nicola again but knowing that if I refused to fight, to carry out the task again then both of the twins would be damned forever, the names erased and quietly left to rot in the annals of the village.

A few more minutes please jailer, I see you at the door and whilst I am in no particular hurry to die, I just want this story told. Thank you, I know there is compassion in your eyes. Just say I refuse to believe that it is dawn yet, it is not dawn until it would have hit the fields at the bottom of the hill that Nicola and I played in.

So Nicola disappeared, the threat of war was too much for her mind, the loss too incalculable. She saw the cheering crowds, the soldiers come to sign people up over the first few months, that stupid phrase it will be over by Christmas, the white feathers wafting the young men off to their death. I would not be tarnished with that ignominious method of reproach. I looked one woman straight in the eye and I have the very strong belief that my contempt for her showed upon my face. She didn’t wilt exactly but she shook slightly, the strength in which not to be tarnished by any other person’s judgement is a shocking release, of course the power to say no, the courage to say you are so wrong about me, is one that perhaps we never truly master.

We got home. Eventually! I was full of rage, Nicola more upset at the prospect. I didn’t want to fight, I abhorred the physical, I disliked the idea of showing one person’s superiority over another just because it made you seem more of a man. It seemed ridiculous to me then as it does now as I see the Corporal finally having enough and wanting to get it over and done with. I was once pinned down on the floor by several lads from school you know Father. My crime was not wanting to pick upon a much smaller lad whose dad couldn’t help what he did for a living. My punishment for breaking the sacred rule, for wanting to show compassion and being a dissenter was too have two lads on my legs, left and right, two more sitting on my outstretched arms, and one on my stomach who used his right elbow to hit my left eye over and over again. It may have lasted for hours, it actually was less than three minutes but my eye, my face was such that I couldn’t see out of it for the best part of two weeks. An eye for an eye Father isn’t that what the Bible says or is just misheard doctrine. Would I, even now find those lads and visit some vengeance upon them, to punch with such dreadful animosity for their actions, their belief in what they were doing. No I wouldn’t. The same as now I don’t blame the men that await me.

Stay with me till the end if you can Father, there is a little more to tell.

The courtyard is empty, do they do that on purpose or is it some last minute reprieve? Some tidying up process for the officers to say, This Nicky, shall we just forget about it, send him back to his mother and Nicola, a member of society who might actually prove useful. No best not lets treat him as a warning that if he refuses to get shot by the enemy then the punishment is worse, he gets taken down by his Government.

Ah here they are. I knew there would be no last minute reprieve, no lawful harmony to the end. So I wonder which one of them will be the one to actually end it. Who will be the executioner carrying out the sentence of the Judge and two man jury. I hope it’s the one I imagine who has deep blue eyes, he might even shed a tear for me if he knew me at all.

War! The habit of making somebody die just because they disagree with you. You might as well batter some kid in school just because they wouldn’t take your side. The taking of one’s soul because you feel aggrieved by their actions, religion, choices in life! I will never know Father if I would ever take somebody’s life just because their outlook on life was so different to mine. I refuse to find out.

There is one last inspection of the guns Father, one last tender moment. would it be easier upon them if I went up to them, closed my eyes and said out loud, let me help you. I should walk over before they tie me to this post and lift up the rifle and take my own life somehow, that way at least their own souls will be saved and I can at least be more than a memory in somebody’s thoughts.

You had better leave me now Father, I don’t want you to be hit on my account, now that really would pray on my soul. Just before the Judge sees his edict carried out, let me tell you Father, let me whisper into your ear as they pull you away that Nicola lives, that Nicky will live through her. Oh yes Father, Nicky may have taken the white feather and bore the disgrace that would eventually come but Nicola wouldn’t. She saw what would happen. How strong her brother was but in some ways so gentle, so mild and passive. War the great leveller eh Father but sometimes we make sure the odds are stacked in our favour if we can. Yes I’m ready. No last words, if you are going to take my life then get on with it for I can no longer fight back.

Ian D. Hall  2014.