A Step Off the Path

A Soldier's Fate

The fire from the heavy machine gun kicked dirt up into their faces, shredded the vegetation and terrified every one of them. They clung to the earth, wishing that it would open up and swallow them.

The noise, the confusion, the screams, and then everything went black for Tamn.

He was reeling through the forest, staggering from one tree to the next.

Where was he? How did he get here? Where were all the others? Were there any still alive? What had happened?

He couldn't see properly - it was all blurry. And it was so quiet, except for that strange ringing in his head. He was thirsty. Water, find some water.

What was that? A building. A farmhouse was it? Help me, please, help me.

The blackness returned.

"He's a soldier, Mama."

"Yes and a very young one too. Probably a conscript."

"What shall we do, Mama?"

Sigh. "Help him as best as we can."

They got him inside; stripped and washed him; put him to bed; spoon fed him fluids. His only injury appeared to be a severe blow to the head, hard to see in his long thick hair.

"He's probably only a year or so older than you, Gina."

"If enemy soldiers come, they will kill him, Mama."

"Yes. And if our own soldiers come they are just as likely to treat him as a deserter and shoot him. We have to burn his uniform, all of it."

The woman had used various ploys to save herself and her daughter from being raped by soldiers from both sides: claiming friendship with a colonel, telling others that they had syphilis, and even by just hiding.

Tamn slowly recovered, but he was still weak and confused.

The local priest sent word that soldiers (their own) were in the village, searching the houses. The soldiers wouldn't say what they were looking for, but they would soon be coming out to search the farms. The woman went and spoke to the young soldier in his sick bed.

"Listen to me. Your name is Tayah, you are my daughter. You are ill with a fever and must stay in bed."

They put him in a nightgown, dressed his hair and made up his face to look like a girl.

It worked.

They maintained the Tayah disguise because they could never be sure when more soldiers might turn up unexpectedly.

Tayah was eventually able to get up and start helping with the farm work. She was a good worker, willing and capable. She steadily regained her full physical strength and mental faculties.

A year and a half went by.

Finally, the pointless war ended. A peace treaty was negotiated and a sort of amnesty declared for deserters - they would be treated 'leniently', but only if they came forward.

"I have nothing to go back to, Mama," Tayah implored of the woman she now thought of as her mother.

"I don't want her to leave, Mama."

The woman smiled somewhat grimly. Her daughter and her adopted 'daughter' had grown close and with a shake of her head she looked from one to the other, scrutinising them. Perhaps she frightened them slightly for they reached for each other's hand. The woman had no trust in the dubious leniency offer, Tayah would be be too much at risk unless she maintained her disguise.

She sighed, "If I am to have two daughters, then so be it, but you must marry . . . secretly."

"Yes," they responded together.