Recruitment Day

            “Yale, Peter”. the soldier, who had a neat haircut and a thick blonde mustache, called out. In his finely groomed hands (much unlike his companions with the guns or us, the townspeople), he held a list of names, each belonging to a boy, ages eighteen to twenty-four, all citizens of the city. It was not in any order, alphabetical or otherwise, and was simply random names of young men of our town. His superior, I would guess, was the one who had written the randomly chosen list.

            “Harrison, Cedric”.

            I stood next to Nan, my girlfriend of two years. Before the war started, I had considered asking for her hand in marriage, but with the war in full swing and with no end on the horizon, I knew I couldn’t take any chances.

            “Wallace, Gregory”.

            My name was going to come up…I just knew it. But I didn’t want to face the facts, to realize this. Sooner or later, I had realized long ago, when the war was in its early years, the army would not be “recruiting” any longer, but rather grabbing every able-bodied man they could. They, too, could not take any chances.

            “Peck, Richard.”

            I glanced behind me, but didn’t catch Richard Peck’s eye. The whole town was gathered here, in the central square, in a closely-huddled circle. The soldier and his list stood in the center, by the statue of our town’s founder. Richard Peck, I knew, was the baker’s son. We had been in school together for many years, until he dropped out to help his ill father run the bakery. Mr. Peck had contacted a disease from the drinking water that many believed was caused by passing soldiers using the water as their toilet. I dropped out also to help support my family. The economy suffered a major blow thanks to the demands of the war, and nearly put my father out of work. My family had been killed in the last raid when soldiers burned my house down. Nan was all I had left.

            “Johnson, Matthew.”

            The soldier’s cold eyes never left his list…how long could it possibly be? Could the army really take every man in town?

            “Adams, Lewis.”

            I looked into Nan’s worried eyes. Without me here, to protect her, she would probably be killed. The war had ravaged the supplies as bands of soldiers raided small towns along the countryside like ours for more supplies. Once, I heard, soldiers took over a town, killed all the males…and took the women. They were all used, young and old alike, as slaves to the soldiers. The generals got to pick out a woman each, and the rest were left to the brutes.

            “Paulson, Norman”.

            Norman Paulson…I knew him also. He was the younger brother of a Sandra Paulson, who was the replacement mathematics teacher at my high school when the previous, Mrs. Ganders, was murdered along with her husband by raiding soldiers several months ago.

            “Manning, Benjamin”.

            The men whose names had been called hugged their crying families and broke away from the circle, to go and stand in a line behind the armed soldiers.

            “King, Edwin.”

            The teen who answered to “King, Edwin” pushed past Nan and I, tears running down his dirty face. Streaks of clean, healthy-looking flesh appeared on his face as the tears ran down.

            Finally, the soldier with the list craned his neck around to look at the bunch of sorry-looking farmhands and apprentice bakers and brothers of teachers that had become recruited to the noble cause. For a brief moment, I thought I saw a flash of a smile come across the bastard’s face.

            I breathed a sigh of relief as he turned back around and began to roll up his list, but then, he paused. He read the last name…the one he had almost forgotten.

            “White, Thomas.”

            They called my name. My knees went weak and my heart started to race…I could not think straight…I watched him read my name off, and it felt almost like slow-motion. Seeing the words formed under his thick blonde mustache made my stomach twist. The hair on his caterpillar of a mustache bristled as he pronounced the “s” in “Thomas”.

            “No! No! No!” Nan suddenly screamed from next to me, snapping me back from my dream-like state. She clawed at my shoulder. Her hair flew back wildly in all directions as a strong wind blew, pushing heavy, dry leaves up against us and the crowd.

            “I won’t let them take you, Tommy!” she cried, tears rushing down her face like a running faucet.

            “Nan, stay quiet!” I demanded. “They’ll hurt you!” I tried to hug her, to pull her close to me to shush her, but she pushed away.

            I saw the soldier with the list, who had rolled it up at this point, motion to his comrades and point in Nan’s direction. My god…they were going to kill her.

            “Nan, you must go, now! Run while you still can!”

            She still resisted, not noticing the two hulking men coming her way.

            “I can’t leave you Tommy, I can’t!” she said, thick tears coming down her face and bubbles of snot forming in her nostrils. Like “King, Edwin”, you could see her pink skin in streaks under her dirty face.

            “They will kill you…” I began, but she nestled herself into me, shoving her hair into my mouth and silencing me.

            “Separate them!” a harsh voice barked behind me. I turned to see the mustached soldier, list in one hand, gun in the other. It had been pulled from the holster on his leg.

            Nan cried and screamed and kicked as the two soldiers took each arm and pulled her away from me.

            “Thomas!” she screamed helplessly.

            I attacked one of the soldiers, and he fell to the ground, taking Nan with him. The other one turned towards me with his weapon, but I fell to the ground then, a horrifying pain suddenly hitting my leg and warmth spreading all over it.

            I cried out as the mustachioed soldier’s gun lowered, smoke rising from the barrel. As two more soldiers took me and led me away, leg useless and dragging along the ground, spouting blood, I saw the two earlier ones throw Nan to the ground and cock their weapons.

            I screamed Nan’s name well after the shots rang out, and I was thrown into the darkness of the enclosed truck along with the other unfortunate souls that were recruited alongside me that cold day.

            The doors of the truck shut, plunging us into darkness, the vehicles started to move and we were led away from the only home I had ever known. Through the little slits in the canvas I could see more soldiers going into the town, some with torches, some without, all with weapons and nasty attitudes.

            The bells of the church rang out, and they were the last thing I remember hearing before everything faded away into darkness. They had called my name, they had ruined my life.

            The truck drove me into the unknown.

The Veteran's Lament

Author's Note: This poem was published in the 2014 issue of Shades, the Columbus Alternative High School magazine.




Crouched in the mud,

Dirt in our mouth and eyes,

We would talk about our lives before the war.

One was a young father, one was a teacher,

One was a teenager barely nineteen,

His ache for his parents still sore.

We would talk about the girls we had been with,

The books we had read,

The classes we had taken at school.

The teacher was educated,

The father was quiet,

The teenager as pale as a ghoul.

As we fought bloody battles

And watched brave men fall,

Many supported the idea.

One that fighting the war

Was truly a lost cause

Against the juggernaut called North Korea.

Clutching our guns close to our chests,

We knew it would keep us safe

And protected.

It would save us from harm,

From the boogeyman of war,

Who was always ready to claim those infected.

He would take them away,

In his dark, cold fingers,

He would take away our comrades and friends.

He would never let go,

He was always stalking,

Ready to snatch us from right around the bend.

So we would talk about things,

Trying to keep our minds off of

The horrors of the terrible place we were in.

We would talk about anything,

Love, loss, friendship

And trying to save ourselves from sin.

One time we sat,

Crouched in our familiar positions

And we spoke about the feeling of death.

About the level of pain we would feel,

About what would happen after

We would die and take our last breath.

The teacher said nothing would happen,

There would be no bright light

Or great, awe-inspiring ascension.

The father said you would either go up

To the kingdom of Heaven

Or go down to the deep dark dimension.

The teenager had said,

He was wasn’t quite sure

What would happen when you keel over and expire.

He questioned the need of a God

Or a Satan,

What if the Bible was simply a liar?

Now this is just me talking,

He had said over the rain,

The raindrops clinging to his brow.

But what if death is just an empty void

Of darkness, of nothingness,

Ready to swallow us when allowed?

The four of sat there quietly then,

Thinking of

What the teenager had said.

Could it be true?

Could we fall into darkness

Once we passed away and were dead?

Hold on I said then,

And everyone got silent

I was ready to finally clear the air.

They all looked at me then,

The teacher, the father,

The teenager with rain in his hair.

Before I die I said then,

Looking at everyone’s face

I want to live my life to the full extent.

I want to get married,

Raise a couple of children,

Go to barbecues and pay the rent.

I truly don’t care

What death is like now,

It is far away from us here.

We’re going to survive this war

Go back to our loved ones,

Sit down at home and have a tall beer.

The others agreed then

That what I had said

About death had been the best one.

That death was a chapter

Of our life’s book

That we would try and forever shun.

The rest of that night,

The four of us sat in the cold

And made lists of “before I die”.

The ball games we would see,

The children we would have,

The expensive televisions we would have to buy.

That rainy night was the last time

The four of us soldiers

Would ever be seen together.

We would never sit as old men

And talk about the war,

Getting comfy in recliners of leather.

The teacher would die at

The Battle of Kham Duc

The young father outside of My Khe of an illness.

The teenager would get blown up

By a mine in ‘68

His body would lay in the ground then with a stillness.

Now only I remain

Of the group of young men

Who called themselves the Surplus Four.

I married my sweetheart,

I had two lovely kids,

But I now sit, knocking loudly on death’s door.

Vietnam may have claimed

The lives of my friends,

The boogeyman may have taken his prey.

But I know that wherever they are,

They are safe and sound,

Their souls are no longer astray.

I know when I die,

I will go up and away

To my own personal heavenly plane.

I know that I’ll go right back

To that cold, rainy night

And see my fellow soldiers again.