Part II – Knife Edge
My memories are a bit like my army photo. The one they took when I signed up. Old, worn, a bit faded, but well known (to me). I smiled for that photo. Not anymore.
To be fair, it was all going down-hill anyway. The last straw was when Stamford was blown up. Sky high too. He was the best soldier out of our patrol, he should have been captain too, except he wasn't a good marksman and I was. And then, I was knee-deep in sh*t about his death. Why he died. How he died. There were rumours of a military tribunal. Dereliction of duty, they whispered. Court martial. Not sentenced to death, but hung out to dry. Stripping of your rank. Your next job will be teaching newbies which end of gun to point at people. Either that of you will be stitching up men who were luckier than Mike. Everybody knew.
And all while the rumours circulated, I went around checking on the injured. Stuck back at base. For want of a better word, I was grounded. My patrol still went off on ops; I just wasn't allowed to join them.
For two months they balanced me on a knife edge. Suspended in space. It took less than that time for my (former) patrol to blown up with three times the explosives it took to kill Stamford. If I'd been there, I would have been dead too. But there was no point thinking like that, not here. Here, you were given a certain amount of time to grieve for people – usually a day – and then you had to go back to normal. To move on quickly, just like that.
I cannot remember grieving for them, for Stamford, Patterson, Phillimore, Davenport and the others. There was a poem I used to like, it said something like, "From perfect grief there need not be/Wisdom or even memory". Something like that.
The, what after that? Court-martial? Being stripped of rank? Well, that was what I was wondering, until it happened. And then I was well known for all the wrong reasons. Again.
Author's Notes:
A court-martial is a military court, traditionally used to discipline soldiers at times of war (according to Wiki).
The poem quoted is "The Woodspurge" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Feel free to correct me on my usage of military terminology.
With thanks to FeelingCrossToday – my only reviewer. Updates will not be this quick, I just happened to be able to steal the PC for a long amount of time.