Every War Has Secrets - Chapter 1

Every war has secrets. Every battle has causalities. Every disaster has survivors.

We learned early on that the only way to survive was to feed off the war. We learned that picking off the leftovers of the battles would keep us alive, so that is what we did. Perhaps if the soldiers had been our own we would not have resorted to such heartless measures, but they were not our soldiers. Neither side was ours, and that is where the trouble all began.

We lived in Elbernath, a small country closed off between two stronger larger countries. These two nations were enemies, dire enemies. They hated each other in every possible way and they never missed an opportunity to attack each other’s political endeavors. Finally, after two decades of intense bickering, the nations had declared war. Of course they did not want to ruin their own country’s lands for the sake of an argument, so they chose to fight in Elbernath, the perfect middle ground.

They waged their war in our streets. They killed our people along with thier enemy soldiers and had no regard for what land was ours. And why should they? They had no need to keep our little nation pure and pristine; it was not theirs to keep. To them, it was only a playground to kill in.

But we cared. We cared very much what happened to our towns and our streets and fields and homes and families and friends. Bit by bit everything was being destroyed.

My father became very hardened to both sides. He was a pacifist, he believed that this war never should have happened in the first place and that the two countries should cease their stupid fighting and sign a peace treaty. But he was a radical pacifist, and he believed that because the two armies would not leave, he would take every chance he got to fight against them.

I learned this first hand one night when our family was having our meager supper. There was a timid knock on the door. My father and brother each grabbed a gun and cautiously opened the door. Two Galcarian soldiers stood there staring desperately into our eyes. One was bleeding and terribly pale.

“Please, sir” the one who was not bleeding whispered in halting Elbernathian. He did not speak our language well. “May we have some food?”

“No. You will not take anything more that is ours. You will get off my property now or I will beat the both of you dead. Leave me and my family alone.”

“Please. We can pay you even. We have a few coins left.” His voice was pleading.

They held out a few coins but my father grabbed them and threw them to the ground. “I have no desire for your filthy coins! Get off my property!”

With that, he shoved them off the steps and they went stumbling down the walk toward the street.

My father bolted the door and we returned to the table. My family all easily returned to their meal, but I knew that I would not be able to take a bite until I had spoken to my father. I mustered up the courage.

“Pa, why did we not help them?”

“Why would you ask me such a question, Molly?” His voice was terribly stern. “We do not help the soldiers; we leave them to rot and starve. Why? Because that is what they do to us. If I ever see any one of you feeding or helping one of them in anyway, I will throw you out of this house without any hope of forgiveness. Do you all understand?”

“Yes, father,” I whispered.

My brother believed in my father’s values whole heartedly, and so did my mother. But I was less certain that he spoke the truth. Sometimes I found my heart filled with forbidden desires to help when I saw the soldiers dragging their wounded comrades through the town. Sometimes the children threw rotten food and rocks at them. It always hurt my heart to see it.

I tried to stay away from the living ones as much as possible. The dead ones, however, I could not avoid. My two cousins and I discovered that the soldiers often had a good deal of valuables hidden in their pockets that we could take to buy our families some better food. After the battles the armies would leave their dead lying in the streets and scatted on the fields and they became the fields from which we harvested.

My cousins and I would walk these fields once filled with wild flowers now covered in muddied blood. It was indeed a terrible sight, but I bore the terrors of it because I knew that my finding would supply me a better meal.

We would search their bodies as carefully and respectfully as we could. Even though my father hated them so much, we still were careful not to steal any personal items like pictures of their children or their wives or girlfriends. But we took their coins and their buttons and other such things. Strangely enough my father did not seem to mind when we brought back coins off the dead soldiers. Maybe he was glad to see evidence that they had perished. Maybe he enjoyed profiting from their loss. But whatever the reason, we took them and we ate better because of it. My cousins and I did not find the job enjoyable, though. It was heart wrenching to look in to all the young faces of men who had died for an argument they probably did not even believe in. But we tried not to let these thoughts tarry in our minds for very long because they would make us sick in both heart and stomach.

One day as we searched the bodies after one particularly vicious battle, I came across a soldier who had his pockets filled with something that looked dearly promising. As I began to search him, he opened his eyes and looked up at me. I screamed a high pitched little girl scream. My cousins started to laugh somewhere off behind me.

“Get over here stupids!” I shouted, regaining my composure. “I found a live one.”

“What?”

They were by my side in an instant each holding a long stick. We didn’t touch him. Just pointed sticks at his face and chest and waited for him to make the first move. He did nothing. He just blinked slowly up at us as we stared down into his pale young face.

“You think he is gonna hurt us?” Jack, my younger cousin looked genuinely scared.

“I don’t think he can move, Jack. If he could, he would have done so already.” William always tried to be the wise one.

Jack looked at the soldier for a long moment. “You gonna hurt us Galc?”

“Hey!” I said. “We aren’t allowed to say that. It is a bad word, okay?”

“No it isn’t. Not when we are talking to them.” He turned back to the soldier. “Hey Galc, are you gonna hurt us?”

William laughed. “He can’t understand you. He’s not from our country, so he can’t speak our language.”

The man closed his eyes again. William bent down and shook him. Nothing. He seemed dead. But no, he still had a pulse.

“What are we supposed to do if we find a live one?” I asked tentatively.

“I have no idea, never found one before.”

“Do we bring him home?”

William laughed. “Only if you want your pa to slice his throat.”

“I don’t want that. He looked so sad.”

“Maybe he is. He is a weak little Galc by the way.”

I frowned. “Stop saying that word, Jack. It’s bad.”

“Yeah, Jack knock it off. Our cousin’s here” William pointed at me.

Jack snickered. “Sorry, forgot you were such a girl.”

We began to search his clothes, silently and methodically. I think we were all afraid of what we might find; we had never searched a live soldier before. But he hardly moved and his body was so cold, it almost seemed like he was not living at all.

In his breast pocket, we found a picture of a little girl with curly hair. It was a black and white photograph, but I imagined that her hair was brown. I imagined how sad the little girl would feel when she found out that this man would never be coming home to her. As I held the picture in my hand, I made up my mind that I would do whatever it took to keep this man safe from my father and all other enemies. I wanted him to go back to this little girl, I wanted him to see her rosy cheeks and hear her delighted laughter.

As we searched further down his body, we found the wound that had made him so pale. A deep gash cut across his abdomen and blood was trickling out staining his body and his clothes. Like all of the other bodies around him, he had lain out in the rain that had fallen over night. And I knew that rain and cold only serve to make bad things worse. Honestly, it was amazing that he was still alive at all.

I looked away after a moment. The sight of all that blood and the swollen red skin was a frightening sight for a little girl like me. Yes, I had seen similar wounds before. My father was a doctor and he often treated wounds that our people experienced when they were hit by the Galcarian. But I had only ever seen the wounds from a distance and never without the comforting presence of my father.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think we have to worry about what to do with him, he is probably gonna be dead really soon”

“Shut up, Jack. I don’t think this is the place where we should leave him to die.” I said.

“What are we supposed to do with him? If we put him somewhere and your father finds out he will kill us all.”

I shook my head. “No he won’t.”

William folded his arms across his chest. “Jack is right.”

How cruel of him to bring that up. “Yes, but he won’t kill us.”

“Please William, we can’t just let him die here.”

“Why not?” Jack frowned. “Why can’t he just die here and we can be done with him?”

“Because we just can’t!” I was fairly shouting. “Even though Pa says he isn’t a real person, I think he is! And no person should die like this.”

William’s brow twitched. I knew that meant he had reached a decision to a difficult dilemma.

“Fine, we’ll help. But if your Pa finds out, I will kill you.”

I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Or if our Pa finds out,” Jack added. “Because that is just as bed.”

It was true. Our fathers were brothers and my Pa controlled my uncle. Uncle did not have convictions as radical as my father, but he never ever went against my father on anything. If my father said to leave a man to die, he left him. If my father told him not to give food to someone, he would withhold the food. My father had him completely under his control. It all seemed so hopeless for this poor soldier. I felt my eyes well up with tears.

“Aw, don’t cry, Molly,” William said. “Where do you want to put him?”

I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to think of the safest place.

“In the old barn. No one goes there anymore,” I said.”

“In the barn? Are you crazy? That is no place for someone who is sick. There is no wall on the east side, he will freeze to death in there just a he surely will out here.”

Of course William was right; I had not really thought it through.

“Well, I’m not going to leave him here to die,” I said stamping my foot down on the ground. “If I have to take him into the living room of my house and show him to my father, I will.”

Jack laughed obnoxiously. “Don’t be stupid, you aren’t going to do that.”

“Yeah, Jack is right. We will put him in the barn, we will cover the wall with blankets or something, we’ll figure it out.”

Blankets was a good idea. We had a lot of those because my late grandmother had taken up blanket making as the only pastime she could do in her old age. She had made so many; warm ones, soft ones, blankets of every kind. And we had so many stuffed away in safe hidden places that no one would notice if they disappeared. It was perfect.

We each stuck out our right hands and clasped them over each other. Under that cold September sky with the clouds so heavy they looked like they could fall, we solemnly swore that we would keep this man from my father until God chose to take his life. It was a good pact. For once in this war, I did not feel like a wicked girl watching idly as soldiers suffered around me. However, whether our decision was wise was a whole other matter. As far as I could tell, we had just done the most stupid thing in the word.