I heft my tiny pack just a bit so it sits more evenly against the small of my back. The straps are small and dig into my shoulders, but that isn’t what bothers me most about it. The pack is small, barely large enough for the first aid kit and single meal inside. It is identical to the packs carried by every man and woman around me, and we aren’t expected to need more. I don’t think they expect us to even eat the meal. We are provided a last meal, but given no chance to eat it.

I was in the front when we loaded the small ferry, meaning I will be the last to disembark. We had been packed together on deck, all fifty of us where only twenty should have stood, for over three hours. Our homeland is a short distance from our current location, only barely out of sight, and yet, I feel a million miles away.

On the shore all around us as far as the eye can see, ships similar to ours are unloading their cargo of uniformed, disposable soldiers. We need to be here, they said. We need to fight, for everything that we love. They won’t tell us who ordered us away from our home, what we are facing, or why. Ours not to question, someone whispered. Ours never to know, a hiss comes back.

We’d had lots of time on the way over to talk. We were not supposed to, but in close quarters like ours, words could be said and not overheard, and so we talked. We steeled ourselves for what was coming by whispering. We were educated, we knew about the horrors of war, in theory at least, and I felt better discussing it with the people around me. We would all die, nearly certainly, we agreed, and I wondered if I should do something about it. Nothing to do, they assured me: everything that can be done, has been done. I know it’s true, but waiting to disembark, I question my seeming maturity of a few minutes past.

I’d wondered, in silence, if perhaps the coward is not so despicable as he seems. In stories and films, they are sometimes given the sort of personality that has the beholder wondering if they could attempt to do better. I was sure I could, if I was brave, and I can be brave. I keep saying that now, I can be brave, I will be brave because I can be brave….

The man in front of me begins to shuffle forward toward the edge of our tiny ship. I am suddenly sad to leave, and the tiny pack jabs my back, reminding me that I will not return. I face forward towards the shore. The sky is dark, filled with clouds darker than any thunderstorm I’ve ever seen. They appear blacker than the most horrible night, and yet, I imagine I can see them roiling above me. The sand in the shore is dark, hard, and almost pebbly. It’s difficult to walk on, when my turn to leave our small haven comes.

In front of us, perhaps half a mile off, is a terribly steep hillside that sheers up, cutting us off from the rest of our country men. I can hear a roar of distant yelling like a fierce battle cry, and my doubts return along with my mantra.

I must be brave, I can be brave, I will be brave because I need to be brave….

The shore teems with thousands of soldiers, all dressed like me, all carrying their own small, jabbing packs, all holding a rifle and shuffling to adjust their helmet straps. We try to stay together, but no one tries to lead us, so we only move forward with the crowd and are soon separated from each other. As I slowly make my way with the rest towards the cliff face, I glance up and see a man standing in a boulder to see above our heads. He is an officer, but he looks so horrified, his eyes glazed as he sweeps through the army. We make eye contact, briefly, and I see that he has been crying. With a leap, he jumps into the fray and joins us on our climb up.

I have reached the bottom of the hill now, and I begin the long, slow climb up. The pebbles slide under all our boots, making the steep climb a battel of two steps forward, one step back. Finally, exhaustedly, I begin to near the top. The yelling is more distinct now, and I try to discern what they are saying. I want to join in when it is my turn, so that I don’t have any more chances to think. I’m scared now, the kind of scared that children feel when they are sure they are not alone in the dark. I force it down, I repeat my mantra, I climb, and try to hear the words in the shouting.

After an hour, I have three men separating me from the top of the ridge, for a ridge it is, I see. It drops away after this, sloping down to the battle field below me. I am being propelled from behind as men continue to climb, but I cannot move now as I realize.

They are not yelling.

They are screaming

Screaming in terror and agony. Screaming as they try to turn around and get back to the boats, empty and departing forever, behind us. Screaming as we realize what should have been clear before. The sky is lit with a terrible red light that leaks over a towering cliff opposite me, and I know, even as I begin shaking with terror, that we did need to come, we need to fight what is hidden in the red light, but I can’t because I am so afraid. I am standing on the cusp of a crescent-shaped bowl, hedged by our armies pouring in and the light shooting up. Below me, hundreds of thousands of men identically equipped are screaming and trying to survive, because that’s what this is now: not a battle, or a war, it’s survival and we are dying.

I turn and madly start trying to claw my way back, but the men facing me are still propelling me forward, pushed by the throng of men still scrambling up the cliff to see this hell. Even as I think it, I am pulled and twisted around by others trying to pass me, and I see it again, that terrible red light, and I know.

That is Hell.

I woke up from a nightmare, and, after a year or more of trying REALLY hard not to think about it, I wrote it down. It seems tame in print, but most things do.