My Final Resting Place - by Jesse Garratt

My Final Resting Place Jesse Garratt © 2024 

A colleague in the trenches with cold feet curled like a foetus, others bravely peeking out.
The ground looks dead. As dead as the men hit by the hail of metal.
Screaming shrapnel and death make themselves at home in our ears.
Bullets and ‘pills’ run laps around the field.
The war continues, as do attendants in the graveyard. Lined up as if marching.
A fresh sting of bullets burns like a mosquito sucking the life out of us with its long metal mouth.
Lice tremble in our hair.
My pain is unimaginable.
My pain grows along with the feeling that this woollen overcoat would be my bed forever.
The Captain peers over the muddy trench, an ‘egg’ clenched in his fist, he pulls the pin and chucks it out into the battlefield.
The enemy fires back.
A burning strike to the head, my memories shaken loose.
Gone, almost immediately.
I have failed my duty and found a forever home.
I will miss my friends and family.
But I am finally at peace.
The pain is gone, and so am I.

About the author - Jesse Garratt, age 12, wrote this as short story for an ANZAC Day project to help people understand what war is like. The 'pills' in the story are the bombs being dropped from planes above, and the 'egg' is a grenade.