War memoirs - Gun smoke

The door came flying in. And before we could digest what had just happened, blinding torchlight was shining direct on our faces.

Now the rattling started. The bullets hissed. Huts were up in smoke. Our world had just gone crazy.

It was as if the crashing in of our door had set off the series of events outside. Where darkness should have been, there was light. Yes, the sky shone red as angry flames went up, burning away homesteads that were only until recently, filled with joy and family life

But that was nothing compared to the voices now agonizing, some pleading for mercy and others winching in pain in the hopeless attempt to resist death.

It is true. You either heard them afar or from a foot next to you. Even then, it really didn’t matter because you could never really tell if it wasn’t you screaming or if you would survive the next hiss past your ears of either a bullet or a machete ridding you off some part of your body.

I don’t know which was preferable: to hear or to see what was happening. Not that I had a choice. But you can be sure you didn’t wish for any.

And then of course, that also depended on whether or not your ear drums were still sober enough to differentiate between the mocking laughter of a rebel slayer and the yielding groan of his victim.

In the same way, it depended on whether you could stand the sight of not just human bodies, but of people whom you had known until then, jerking in feats, dismembered and wasted. People whom you had known and loved, there now lying lifeless in pools of blood

That moment, after the door came crashing in, I was thrown through and received from outside with a thump on my face-side.

I tried to rise, but the punch or slap, whatever it was, to my face-side, landed me back on the ground. After that, I did not attempt to rise again. A gum-boot rested on my chest and a torch-light zoomed to my face.

I wondered if my tormentors knew that I was only fourteen -only a child. Or did they take my lanky figure for an adult?

But that was obviously not true. Being young made no difference. And that immediately became clear. I was not lying down alone. There were many others, infants, children, adults…all yelling.

My nightmare had just started.

I couldn’t make individuals out, but I didn’t have to. Whatever was happening, the yelling and crying was enough for you to know.

With touch light glaring down on my face, I was, once might say, lucky as I didn’t have to witness whatever was happening around me. It was may be easier. But no, our captors obviously had different plans.

Taking me by the collar bone, he jerked me up. For the first few minutes, I could only make out the glaring flames. My head whirled.

Until that moment, the noises still rung into the air, but after some time, they started to subside. Save for a few groans of the few defiant souls, everything came, or at least was coming under control. Even those defiant souls, were sooner put out of action by the spiral of a bullet.

Shortly, we were gathered. The sorting and the screening started.

In the first column, adults, the elderly to be exact, were arraigned. The second column was for the youths. I was bundled up there. The really much younger ones were arrayed in the third column. This is the column where I obviously belonged. I was only fourteen. My captors were obviously deceived by my body.

Did I wish to be in the line of childen, where I rightly belonged? Yes. They were clearly going to show children leniency, that is why they were screening us, or so I thought.

I couldn’t have been wrong