The young soldier sifted through the little box filled with letters and photographs. He found what he was looking for and picked it up. It was a photo of a young woman and a small child. The woman had silky long black hair which made her fair complexion even fairer. Her blue eyes shone like diamonds against the dark hair. She wore a long white dress and was kneeling down with her arms around the child, a look of bitter happiness in her eyes. The child was fair of skin like her mother and had the same glittering blue eyes. Her hair was light in color though and barely fell to her shoulders. She wore a little white gown like her mother and looked to be no more than two. The soldier looked at the photo for a long time. He ran his fingers across the woman and child’s faces. He imagined the little girl in his own arms and smiled at the pride he felt for her being his daughter. Daniel had enlisted in the army around the time he first met Isabel, his black haired beauty. They had loved each other from the moment they met, never spending more than a day apart. They were wedded on the one year after the day they met and soon after Isabel was pregnant. When she gave birth to Angela, Daniel knew he would never be happier. He dedicated his life to them and loved them with all he had. The war had been going on for a year and a half already. It was thought that it would be a short one and Daniel had no fear of leaving American soil. It wasn’t as short as had been thought though and soon after his daughters birth he got the news that he was to go over seas. Heart broken as he was, he was ready to fight for his country and protect the loves of his life from the enemy. His daughter barely two months old, he held her in his arms one last time and promised her and Isabel that he would come home to them soon. It had been almost two years since he said that. He had left willingly and prepared to defend his country but he was now weary and regretful of ever enlisting. He had missed his daughter’s first steps, her first words, her first birthday. He missed his wife and his home. He wanted only to be back with them and their love. While over seas he found out what a cruel thing war is. His regiment had been sent to a small town late one night to evacuate it. There were only woman, children, and men to old to fight living there. They were innocent people caught in the middle of the slaughtering. He had evacuated several houses when he came to one with the lights still on. He opened the door and walked in to check if there were still people in the house. He was mortified by what he found. There was a baby cradle tipped over with a screaming baby lying crushed under it in one corner of the room. In the other corner was a girl barely into womanhood, sobbing uncontrollably with her legs pulled close to her. Dark blood stained the lower area of her dress and dripped down her legs onto the floor. In the middle of the room, an older woman, undoubtedly the mother of the baby and girl, was pinned up on the table. There was a soldier between her legs forcing himself into her and grabbing at her breasts. She shrieked hysterically begging for him to stop. The man just laughed and pushed himself at her harder. Daniel ran to the table and pulled the soldier off the woman. He recognized him immediately. They had met each other in boot camp and Daniel had always thought him to be a good man. The soldier looked at Daniel and smiled, “You know how it is here Danny, my boy. Gotta get your kicks when you can. Go ahead with the one in the corner. I doubt she had ever been done before, was tight as hell… one good fuck.” He laughed and turned back to the woman on the table. Another time during battle Daniel had found another soldier in his regiment who had captured several of the enemies. They were supposed to bring captives to the Lieutenant for him to take care of, but this man was taking care of them himself. There were two captive men. Daniel had thought that the oldest seemed to be around forty, and the other only seventeen. The soldier handed the seventeen year old his rifle and told him to load it while he held a pistol to the boys head. The boy loaded the rifle with shaky hands and looked up at the soldier. “Alright,” said the soldier as he pointed to the old man, “Now shoot him.” The boy looked at the soldier with wide eyes. “But that is my father.” The boy stuttered. “Good, now kill him or I’ll kill you.” the soldier replied as he tightened his grip on the pistol. The boy looked at his father with desperate eyes and the father nodded despairingly. It was understood that the father was telling the son to kill him in hopes that the son might live. Daniel watched with horrified eyes as the son pulled the trigger on his father and was simultaneously shot in the head by the soldier. The boy and father fell to the ground together. The boy had had bad aim and the father lay on the ground trying desperately to keep his organs inside himself while looking upon his sons brains spilling out the side of his head. The soldier stood over the father and son for a good ten minutes until he was sure life had left both of them. Then he picked up his rifle, wiped the blood off of it with the dead boy’s shirt, and walked away. These were but mere casualties of war. The other soldiers seemed to be used to these scenes but they still sickened Daniel. He couldn’t sleep at night. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t think. Every time he closed his eyes he saw some innocent person being brutally murdered. He lost all faith in humanity. The only thing that kept him from taking a pistol to his own head was the thought of his beloved wife and daughter. He read and reread the letters Isabel wrote to him every chance he got and looked at their photograph every day. He wrote to Isabel when he could but told her nothing of the horrors he had witnessed. He couldn’t bare the thought of her unadulterated mind imagining any of the sights he had seen. He longed to be back with her and his precious daughter in his arms. Another three months past and Angela had her third birthday. Daniel’s regiment was finally told they were going home. He wrote to Isabel at once. It was a long trip home but he didn’t care. All he thought of was his beautiful wife and daughter and that he would soon be back in the company of their love. He reached American shores and was immediately in a cab home. When the cab pulled up to the house, Isabel ran out to greet him. She embraced him and showered him with kisses and love. He held her close to him and vowed never to leave her side again. Then he asked where his daughter was. Isabel said she was upstairs. Daniel ran into the house. He went to the stairs and there was his precious Angela looking down at him. His heart filled with joy and Isabel came to his side. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Look Angela! It’s daddy!” Angela smiled and sat on the top stair. She slid down them laughing. At the bottom of the stairs she looked up at her daddy and pulled a plastic gun from behind her back. “Boom, Boom!! I got you!!” she laughed. He was back over seas with a gun pointed at his head. Boom, Boom! And he died.
What you have are really many stories in one here. The story you really want is the one that has this neat ironic ending. The other stories that intervene and could be developed separately are the incidents of moral crisis your soldier meets. The middle seems like a diversion, instead of being a necessary part of the whole. What you need are references throughout, to the family, the daughter waiting for him and their promise of rescuing him from this hell. For a draft, it's a very interesting effort!
THE BLIND PHOTOGRAPHER It started out with the wardrobe corner. The one on top, closest to me, of course. There it was whenever I’d wake up. Up there at 2 a.m. Hovering. Even when I wasn’t looking, or in the darkest dark hour; it was still there. Silent and menacing. My wife thought it sounded somewhat crazy, but she could see from my eyes that it was true; and stood by me. The corner seemed to have the potential to dive, at any particular time it chose. But we had nowhere else to put it.” “Sounds painful” the host said sympathetically. “Sure” “So, Tony, how did it escalate from corners? I’m sure the viewers would like to know.” Well George, the next thing that started to intimidate me, silly as it sounds, was the clock. It was a round clock with a white face and very black sharp hands; especially the big hand. Or the long hand as I came to know it. First time was when it was about 11.45. I’d just got into bed, Judy was already asleep, but all the way around to 12’20 or so I felt uneasy and couldn’t take my eyes off it.” “And when did the blade thing start? Was it before or after the accident?” “Well George, if you think about it, it had to have happened before the accident. Wouldn’t you say?” “Yeh, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about it like that.” “Don’t worry George. He said holding out a hand and giving the presenter a little pat on the knee. It was when we went to stay in a holiday apartment at the express invitation of my cousin from Albury and I discovered soon after arriving there, having driven most of the day, the room, being in the subtropics as it was, contained an overhead fan about two metres in diameter. I insisted we keep it turned off of course but I hardly slept a wink, and we went home a couple of days early nonetheless.” “Were you worried Tony, that it was going to fly off or something?” No. Nothing specific like that. As I just told you, I wouldn’t allow it to be turned on. Even disabled the switch, but it was just such a terribly ugly thing to have suspended above where you are trying to live, and enjoy yourself. The potential of the darn thing you could say. The ridiculous unnecessariness of it. Can’t anybody open a bloody window these days or what!!” “Yes, yes, Tony, I see your point. Who needs them! But, Tony tell me more. After the accident.” “Well. It just got worse after that. Especially when some of the other workers began to cotton on. And the boss was always watching me. I’d always made sure I had something else to do when there was a need to cut or rip timber. Or cut anything more serious than a corner for that matter. (chuckles) If I saw a blade spinning I would be mesmerized by it. Images of my fingers flying off in many directions, gory as they even seemed to me, drew me toward it, like losing fingers would be like licking a Mr. Whippy on a hot summer afternoon.” (Presenter; legs crossed, fingers over mouth.) “Go on.” “Well, one day I was happily knocking a door hole in an external wall we had extended off, but no sooner had I punched the first few bricks out and I stuck my face in the hole to check out the other side when I saw a couple of blokes in the other room about to start ripping some 6 by 2’s into 3 by 2 battens. I was brought to a hypnotistic halt and as soon as that power-saw kicked-in I was intent on getting to it any which-way I could. I began swinging the sledgehammer like a marching band following my hard-beating heart. Six bricks, 12 bricks; a dozen more. But no sooner did I have a decent size breach and set my front leg through than the wailing of the spinning, ripping blade; stopped!” “Yeah. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” The main man was saying to his phone as his off-sider coiled up the extension lead and they packed to leave. “That must have been difficult, continuing to work amongst power saws and chain saws, especially in the same surroundings where the accident had occurred. How did you deal with the overwhelming desire for self-dismemberment? Was it difficult? Did you ever think about changing your job?” Change my job? That’s why I’m here now. I tried to change my job. I’d had to quit but couldn’t get another one even though the bills came pouring in like the rejections. I was nobody. We were trying to survive on the dole. Judy sold her car. It was the pits.” “So what were you doing on the ferry on the afternoon last July that has been talked about so much since. Were you going for a job?” “No, actually I was coming back, cause as you know I live in Leichhardt. I didn’t get it. I think it was because I’m too ugly, and then, well you know the rest.” “No, I don’t know the rest. Only what I’ve read in the press and the maritime police report. How did it happen exactly, and how did those kiddies survive. I’m sure the studio audience, as well as the viewers at home, want you to tell us. One bit at a time.” “Well, you already know I’d been to Manly. That’s where the job interview was. The sea was rough outside the heads, I knew that from the ride over, but at the wharf on the way back, right from the bit where they changed us around to another smaller boat, or ferry as they still called it, I had a very bad feeling.” “So what was this other boat like. Not a normal ferry?” “No. Not a normal ferry at all. And that’s why I’m so annoyed with the Department of Maritime Services. It may have been a ferry a long time ago but it had been requisitioned and adapted for maintenance work so it was a bit of a hybrid really. You’ve probably seen pictures.” “So you think they were negligent?” “That’s neither for me to say nor the subject we are discussing today George, but then, when we began crowding onto the large open foredeck I became extremely concerned when I noticed the portable sawmill roped to the gunwale. (Twisting his torso toward the studio audience) For those who don’t know what a portable sawmill is, its basically a rather large circular toothed blade on the end of a boom that is powered by a petrol motor on wheels. For someone with a fear of blades it was the mother of all sharp-things and the Department of Parks and Gardens shouldn’t have had it there in the first place! Anyway, I tried to put it out of mind as I’d been instructed by my therapist. It had begun with corners and become spinning blades, but really, in the scheme of things a portable mill like that is worth ten or twenty chain saws, hard to ignore, and power saws diminish to obscurity. Forget em!” “So, there you were, aboard a makeshift ferry with a bunch of school-kids and a huge saw. So what happened?” “Well soon after we cast off and just as the vessel was experiencing the maximum effect of the swells passing through the mouth of the harbour, and affecting the vessels steerage, being as it was we were abeam.” “So the boat had begun to move around; to roll to and fro. “Yeah, that’s right. The old tub was rolling. No two ways about that. And just at the worst time of all the petrol motor was started by one of the young hooligans! And if that wasn’t enough, when the louts, or just plain nasty stupid little bastards, got the motor started it began spinning the blade of course which cut straight through the ropes that were supposed to be holding it in place. Didn’t they? Hey!” “So with this knowledge of your long-held fear of sharp things, and as you said the mill rated high, very high, what did you do?” “What did I do? Try to put yourself in my position, George. Fifty or sixty school kids within range of a one meter blade on the end of a three meter boom rolling about on the deck of a heaving old tub! What would you have done, hey?” “I hadn’t thought about it, Tony. I guess I would’ve sprung with super-human strength across the rolling deck and landed on the boom of that dastardly mill and done my damnedest to bring it back under control before the entire group of innocent children were cut to ribbons.” “Precisely. But when I found myself straddling those steel bars all I could see were the blurred screaming faces of the children pressed back against them behind, trying desperately to keep away from the roaring blade, screeching like it needed blood, and no prescribed way of stopping it.” “But you did stop it didn’t you.” “That’s right I did.” “But not without cost.” “That’s right.” “So can you run us through it now.” “Ok.” He said adopting a slightly splayed posture. “Rapidly reversing my position on the boom, in a glance I took in the means of the deadly disc’s spinning motion. The rubber v-belt! That was its Achille’s heel. To slip it, or brake it, or send it off its pulleys or bearings! That was the answer to the answer. I slid forward, took a deep breath, and rammed my left arm into the place where the belt-drive acts to revolve the blade, but except for a momentary hiccup it hardly slowed it. I hit it with my bunched right fist, and almost immediately lost it to the wrist. So in with a leg, first the lower, I should have know better, and then the thick of me thigh. It ground them out, bone, gristle and all. Like a sausage smoothie. A real solid wedge of meat was needed, with plenty of bone. So two limbs I gave it, my last remaining arm and last remaining leg; not the forearm or shin. NO way, the works, all the way to the torso. The full monty!” The presenter kept nodding, slightly. You could have heard a pin drop. “And as you know. He said far more slowly, twisting again toward the audience, It faltered, it spluttered, and just as it struggled the most to stop itself from stalling, with a smoke ring of greasy smoke, the belt flew off; and the spinning blade stopped!!” Huge applause from the audience. Everybody waits for it to run down. “And the children were safe.” Tony finished, grinning and lowering his face kind of like a bow.” Another smattering of applause. “Okay. Tony. Is it true you are going to run across Australia?” “Well not this year George, we’re still talking about it.”
From a writer and reader's viewpoint, the soldier story is good, but I would have liked to find out what he did about the soldier raping the woman. From a former soldier and now wife of a soldier's viewpoint, I feel disappointed that it seems to say there are more bad soldiers than good soldiers. There are far more soldiers like Daniel than the awful soldiers he came across.
I'm sure there are far more good soldiers than there are bad and i'm sorry if that's what you got from my story. I was really trying to make a point of war being bad, not the soldiers.
Good story. Might just be my own personal view, but your sentences seem very choppy. The story doesn't seem to flow for me because of that.
