As the bullets continued to rip through the corpses of my already fallen friends and brothers in arms.
I looked up at the rock walls that we were ordered to climb and take hold of just for the sake of freedom for the people of this war-stricken distant land.
As I looked back towards the ocean, now covered to the shore-line of unnecessary spilt blood. I thought of the cause to this messed up war that I was forced to lay my life upon.
I can remember before this mission; me and my fellow GI’s would talk about the cause of this war, but we could not find the logic to it all. A man, a single man caused it all is what we were told. A man that has an entire county --- no, nearly a continent under his unyielding control. But I ask to you – is it really just a single man? I refuse to believe that this was all just a cause of one lone man. No, I believe that it was just not him, but the entire country – no. The entire world, had let this lone man do what he has currently in motion. But now, we are to cease the outcomes of his actions that we the people of the world had let him do.
Now that I sit on the sands of this beach that we have been ordered to invade, and also now noticing the throbbing pain of a bullet wound to my left thigh, I now randomly question the reasons to this mess? If I am to continue my thought process of these causes and events I am most certainly to lose either my life or my sanity. But still… I can not help to wonder despite this unfitting setting which I have been condemned to fight for supposed liberty and justice for all, for what purpose (if that is the right word for this) I do not understand.
Now I watch as one of the enemy bunkers insides become engulfed in flames that escape through the windows that over look the blood-covered beach. As I look closer, I see enemy men that were within, scramble out through the window to fall to their deaths, as their bodies are entirely engulfed in flames
I then realize that despite the reasons of the past that has led to these horrifying events, there is no doubt, that no matter how much we may blame a single man or an entire nation, there is no changing the already ravaging tides of war and more importantly the wars that will come from this war, and then the wars from the results of that war. Now matter how much we might think that each war started with one man in that time… that in fact that every war was in fact started from a singular point in time. No. Not from the causes of the single man we blame now, but before then. Probably dating back before we even started to make records of events. And thus, thinking of why events to a war start are in fact; irrelevant and futile.
After The Story
Enjoyed this story? As you may have guessed from the events and setting that I have mentioned you have probably come to realize that the setting is the battle that took place on the date June 6th, 1944 also known as “Operation: Overlord” and more famously; “D-Day”.
I was inspired from the opening battle of the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan” which recreates one of the five beaches that the Allied forces invaded. I unconsciously decided that I wanted the character – as you’ve obviously guessed; a soldier – unnamed.
If you are by chance wondering of the moral, or the message of my short story, it is of (as mentioned before) an unnamed marine who was drafted into WWII, who was sent to the European campaign of the war. And shortly after arriving on the beach, he is wounded, and as he sits watching the horrors around him he suddenly begins to wonder why WWII started. And as he wonders he quickly realizes that the logic of the cause is so morally incorrect. And then further notices that despite the fact no one enjoys the facts of the cause of the war, he comes to term that no one can change what has already happened, and thanks to this thought he also realizes that even if WWII ended, that battles would never be done. In fact other conflicts would arise from the results of WWII, which in fact historically conflicts did arise from the war.
I also wanted to point out that in fact a lot of wars have come from a certain points in time that happened decades before those wars. For example; it is commonly known that the treaty that ended WWI in fact were the initial cause for WWII. And then almost immediately the Cold War arose from the results of both World Wars. In WWI there was a revolution happening in Russia, and thanks to the Germans who were desperate to get the Russians off their Eastern Front helped cause the Russians to switch to Communism. And due to Communism, and the fact that Russia got to Berlin before the United States in WWII caused the Cold War, and then during the Cold War, two other wars were started; The Korean War, and then the bloody Vietnam War. And also thanks to the Russians, their Communism spread to other countries that were friendly to Russia, thus leading to other conflicts besides the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
I again say; I hope you enjoyed this short story and the small History lesson. I hope I’ve made you realize of the unlimited knowledge, wisdom and sense of human morality that the lessons of History can bring, and maybe even opened a new door of deeper thinking for you in not just History, but in all things.