WAR GAME (Memoir of a would-be soldier)
	
	Stupid to come this way, and I knew it even as I did it; one of many moments in which my haste has preceded disaster. 
	It was a long drop —long enough to have time to think about it— and one I’d never have taken if not about to get shot in the back. However, it had been my only escape. 
	Seeing the direction I took, they’d laughed and shouted things from behind I knew were insults. Their words leavened my self-rebuke and kneading it to a fury. A heat raged through me, threatening to raze reason and bring me to turning just so as I could shoot—just one; life for life.
	It was my legs alone which kept me from rashness, pumping as they were too fast for even slight change in direction. I get angry thinking about it even now. I hate being laughed at, makes me want to hit things. If it ever happens again, though I doubt it would, but if it did, I think I would turn.
	I saw Willy get hit. It was comical because he took so long to admit it. Kept running toward them after they’d shot him, easily ten steps. When at last he fell, he lay there moaning. Moaning how unfair it was. Whining Willy we called him; couldn’t stop whining even when his game was over. 
	We were the last, Willy and I... Now I was the last. And I had their flag.
	I took the bank at full trot, reasoning it better to risk injury than lose like Willy had.... It was about half-way that I changed my mind. This - was - going - to - really - hurt! 
	I screamed the last of the distance, an introductory scream to the one I knew I’d give when I hit the bottom. I was wrong. On landing, the wind was knocked forcefully out of me, such that I couldn’t even croak. I felt nothing; which wasn’t convincing since I’d definitely heard something. I looked down and saw the glistening gore of my right thigh muscle surrounding the jagged spur of a bone... my bone? Oh joy! It was as surreal an experience as I’ve ever had. 
	A strange chill wave of nausea swept up my back and down my front, cresting at the peak of my skull as prelude to that marvel of anthropological safety mechanisms—pain. It was then I screamed in primal earnest. 
	I hadn’t imagined a person could hurt so much nor scream so long. Part of me had always disparaged the suffering of others, chiefly because I’d experienced so little in my own life. Now I felt I could sympathise with the damned. I was sure hell aptly epitomised this sort of agony. 
	As strange as it may sound, part of me remembered the chase and had me glancing to the top of the embankment even as I hollered—my thoughts staggering momentarily on the precipitous angle and extreme height of what I gazed up at. I couldn’t decide whether to congratulate myself on being so brave or punch myself out for the fool I was. 
	My position prevented me from seeing anyone, though I assumed they must be up there.
Unaware, they’d assumed I’d landed without harm and was escaping—Oh presumption, thou mother of strife—and had immediately doubled back to cut me off at the base of the bluff. They knew I had to go that way you see, no point going up. Well, they thought they knew. In truth I wasn’t going anywhere. I even called to them for help, amused that only a moment ago they were trying to shoot me. Did I now want them to rescue me? Some soldier I was.
	My pain had eased quickly, surprisingly; I’d thought it would be my end. There was copious blood though, and I began to feel dizzy. Another cold flush passed like frigid water under my skin, fretting my nerves to trembling even as it benumbed them, fatigue replacing vigour with every undulation. I lay down, which seemed to take longer than usual.
	Lying there at the base of the cliff, its sheer wall like a freeway to the sky beyond, I started to daydream. Odd, I think now, daydreaming while you’re bleeding to death, your thighbone jutting from your flesh in fervent announcement while you lay there sedately predisposed with lighter thoughts. Yet day-dream I did, and, for whatever reason, the images of those dreams still remain, etched still-life’s to the inside of my eyelids I can peruse at will, even now; None that really make sense, though one image does stand deepest...
ME. I saw me. 
	Some say it was an E.N.D, an Experience of Near Death. You know, the spirit leaving the body to have a bit of a look-see. But I don’t know. Who can say? Sounds a bit far-fetched, but what do I know. All I remember after that was the drone of a chopper—a dream outside my dream. Faces merging, voices like the distant rumble of traffic and a total sense of lightness. I think a person could be content in that place, wherever it is, maybe even forever. No sensation but that of ungraspable weightlessness, like being the air itself. No thoughts, well, none to associate with any tangible awareness of self. It was almost a disappointment to leave, to become touchable again while remembering what it was to be untouchable, invulnerable.
	Six weeks in traction later, with the bedsores to prove it and an unreachable itch-induced psychosis that almost had me thumping the nurses, I was rated fit enough to return to life. The doctors all clear was like a royal pardon which only the bored-to-madness can appreciate. If he had been a she, I would have proposed; as it was I kissed him. Not on the mouth.
	A week later saw me back at work on light duties for a month. The boys put on a hearty Welcome-Back for me. Snapshots —courtesy of Willy-the-won’t-die-wonder— of my scrap with the Reaper were plastered over the large bulletin board, an enlarged one of my recovery revealing just how revealing being in traction can be. It was nice to be the topic of conversation at every lunch-break though, and I think the comedy circuit must have benefited from the humour birthed at those sessions. 
	As for now, well, let’s just say that I’m going to take my girlfriends advice and drop Skirmish in favour of golf.	
THE END

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