Memories

It's easy to forget, I think to myself as I lie under the weight of the night's sky, my back nestled snugly in the lush green grass of St Peter's park. A faint breeze brushes across my face with an almost gentle timidity about it, as I observe the brilliance of the sight before me; the silver crusted moon, which suspends over a sea of darkness, glinting like a ten piece coin. It reigns over the stars, which sprawl outwards, smudging the darkness like glitter, coating the heavens with their surreal beauty. Each one of them share and indulge in their perfect tranquility, as brothers share a mother, their numbers as vast and numerous as the grains of sand on a beach, except contrasting with their seemingly wondrous, majestic, even god-like excellence, spanning across the entire celestial globe and commanding their authority. I breathe out a deep sigh of amazement, awing at their greatness. Someone once told me that the stars are like angels; they come out and watch the world at night, beaming down and looking upon us with kind fondness, protecting us and caring for us while we sleep.

Thinking back, delving into the deeper pockets of my memory, I remember someone else telling me about the stars, someone I knew well. He described them as the souls of the dead, which come down and look upon us not out of love, but to remind us of our duty, our duty to avenge them, to carry on their cause, to finish what they could not. That man joined the stars that night.

To describe the sky that night as a thing of beauty would be an utter lie. It was not the stars which lit up the world that night, but the explosions, flashing brightly in the darkness as they set the world on fire; and it was not the sound of silence which met my ears that night, but it was the cries of dying men, screaming, weeping, calling for their mothers; and my heart, thumping in my chest, ricocheting with such violent force that one could liken it to that of the pounding of a blacksmith's hammer. As I look up at the milky orb that is the moon, it brings me only memories of the paleness of the men around me in the trench. Their faces etched with the marks of fear, exertion, dread, their eyes plagued with the horrors that they had seen, things that no man should see, incomparable. These men that were sons, fathers, husbands, brothers, my brothers: good men. Men that would die.

And so when the order was given to go over the top, when we clambered out of our refuge and when we raced across no-man's land, none of us stopped. Not when our fellow men were rained down on by bullets, when fallen comrades called out to us for help, when my old school mate's legs were blown off. I didn't slow down, didn't stop running, didn't stop moving until I reached the enemy trench. And as I lie here, gazing up into the abyss at the inky darkness, I am reminded of nothing but memories of the blood, leaving the German soldier as I pierced him in the chest with my bayonet. A man with a family, a life, possibly even a lover; a man that I had slain. And as I looked down at him, and he stared back up at me, all I remember is the look of shock on his face as his life left him. The unexpectedness of it, the confusion, the fear; a look that no man can look upon and still call himself human; all before he fell back and lay still in the soaked mud.

These memories come back to me as I lie here, gazing upwards. Staying with me. Haunting me. As much a part of me as my arms or legs. And as I lie motionless, I realise my selfishness, my absurdity, my foolishness; of course it is not easy to forget. It is a sin to forget; possibly one of the only sins which I will not be guilty of committing. For this curse which lays upon me, this immovable phantom cannot be ridden of. I can never forget.