Work Text:
Definitely Not A Hero
I should have gone to America with my brother in the late 20s.
How naïve I was, I thought things were going to get better.
But when have they ever gotten better?
I am so tired of living through once in a lifetime historic events. I know I am not a young man, but Gott, I feel ancient.
I doubt it is even the creak in my knees, the white in my hair, or the constant aches and pains.
It is fighting in another war I do not want to be a part of. The first was bad enough, but this one, no one could convince me I am on the right side of this one.
I think it is the pretending that wears me down.
Pretending that I do not care, pretending to support a government that I detest, pretending that this whole ordeal does not frustrate me to no end.
I still feel old wounds and hear the echoes of voices from a war that was supposed to prevent this current one from ever starting.
I am so tired of all the arguing and the fighting, why can’t everyone just get along?
I do not understand all this hatred.
I feel older than I should.
Especially, as the short days turn bitter cold and the long nights colder still.
I feel a deep ache in my bones and a cold that even my thick coat can’t block as the wind pushes its weight around.
I do not know how the prisoners manage with their thin uniforms.
I feel so bad for those poor boys.
They remind me so much of myself and my comrades a lifetime ago.
What a travesty, there was so much bloodshed, bloodshed that began aging me beyond my years.
I am too young to have white hair.
And now, ach, now even more blood is shed and here I am again, on the losing side.
Why can things not just be simple and mundane?
Why does fate bully me so?
Why am I so helpless?
All I want, all I’ve ever wanted since I was a boy was to make people happy.
Especially die kinder; ach, how I ache to see them smile again.
I am a toy maker, not a soldier.
I did not pay attention to politics; I wish I had.
I woke up one morning to an edict forcing me back into a uniform I never imagined I would ever have to wear again.
"We need brave heroes like you to fight once again for the glorious fatherland..." that is all I managed to read before crumpling it into a ball and never looked at it again.
Hero, no, I never was a hero, all the heroes are dead.
Sadly, I have seen more war than most of the boys in this camp. Some only flew a mission or two before being entrusted into our care.
They do not know of the terror of the trenches. And in my heart, how I am glad they do not know of it.
They do not know the thick fog of gas. A fog that is so engrained within me that some misty mornings my muscles reaching for a mask I no longer carry.
My heart breaks for all those I lost to the right and left of me who never got to see their family again.
My heart is still heavy with knowing I am here while heroes are not.
I hate seeing these boys struggle with the same weight of guilt that comes with surviving.
Ach, I have become such an old man with my musings.
But what am I to do other than think as I stand guard over these poor boys?
I have to distract myself from thinking of what it really is that they do.
I must keep that far from my mind.
For when I see nothing, say nothing, think nothing, they are safe; I am safe.
If I have learned anything since trudging through the almost thigh deep muck of the trenches, safety is much more important than being anyone’s hero if you want to live to see another day. No, I am definitely not a hero.