Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: the Military

The solider carries the gun, but the politician decides when the soldier actually uses it, so grandpa, himself a retired major, once observed. He was right. Sargent Peters now agreed. How could this civil war be justified?

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What was it about this concept of democracy that brought out the worst in people? This side claimed it was defending it; the other side claimed it was fighting for it. Who was right? Who was wrong? Well, whatever it was, obviously right would now be proved by might. It was as simple as that.

And disagree as he did, he knew better his duty to take orders. And so it was that, in the ghosted darkness, broken by the hurrah echoing from and to miles away, there in the in the midst of the column, Corporal Peters marched in sync, and forward, shouting along.

At home, grandpa stared hard through the misted window, counted every shadow, desperate to see one lanky broad shouldered one march forward and toward the door. “Will he return?” he asked himself.

“I will return,” Peters had promised him, them, the day the military command had recalled him to the front. And that he swore to do, even now as he marched and sang “I serve the Flag”, a song made popular during the independence struggle.

He tried as much as he could to stay distracted, to keep his thoughts away from home, from grandpa, from Claire, from his unborn son.

Traveled into far reminisces, it was a sharp bust, then a rapid rat-tat-tat, that reawakened Sargent Peters into the reality of an enemy just struck from within the midst of the darkness. He took cover, everyone did, scampered. The longest and scariest night of his 29 years had just started.

Grandpa's broken face flashed, Claire’s desperate pleas echoed one last time, “Come back home to your son.” And teary, added, “I love you Pet”. He could not fail them. And now responding to his commanders order, he fired with abandon.