(no subject)
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.
--Siegfried Sassoon
He makes it through most of the day before he realizes what day it is, but by then it isn't too late to do something.
It's always been kind of a strange day back home, a day with two meanings, one of them largely ignored, or so it always seemed to him after he had cause to recognize the second meaning. For most people--most civilians, it's hard to get away from that word, though it seems ugly in this context--it's a day for picnics, for barbecues, for the beach, for a day off from work and maybe some lip-service to the dead, which the dead must be used to by now.
It's a beautiful day--a perfect day for the beach, if it comes to that, and once he finds the flowers the beach is where he goes. There's no military monument or memorial stone to put them on, so the beach seems like the natural default. He doesn't know what any of the flowers are--wild, jungle-grown, violently colored, he thinks one of them might be some kind of lily. It doesn't matter. He stands at the line where the water meets the sand and throws the flowers in, watches the tide carry them out, and he thinks about Al Tallil, five body bags and one of the worst days of his life. Five black body bags, five faces, five boys who never went home. He never wrote to their families--he'd tried but when the time came and the paper was in front of him he'd found himself physically unable to make it and the pen meet--and for years he's regretted it. But what could he say? They were dead and he wasn't, and that in itself presents a problem, a question faced by all survivors, and then the guilt that follows, when the simple fact of being alive feels like a slap in the face of those who are not.
He sits down on the sand and watches the sea carry his flowers away until they're faint spots of color heading towards the horizon and the sun. There's no point to the guilt, he's spent most of the rest of his life trying to learn that, but perhaps he hasn't come as far as he might. And he thinks about the others, about Florence, and Johnny with his family that isn't really his family, Sommer and Wolfe and Escalante, and even Mel, even Santiago, and he thinks that he's seen too far much death for one set of eyes to bear, and that it began at Al Tallil, in Kuwait, in the desert which, maybe, part of him had never wanted to leave.
[OOC: wasn't going to but he wouldn't shut up. open to all; he's not moody so much as introspective.]
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.
--Siegfried Sassoon
He makes it through most of the day before he realizes what day it is, but by then it isn't too late to do something.
It's always been kind of a strange day back home, a day with two meanings, one of them largely ignored, or so it always seemed to him after he had cause to recognize the second meaning. For most people--most civilians, it's hard to get away from that word, though it seems ugly in this context--it's a day for picnics, for barbecues, for the beach, for a day off from work and maybe some lip-service to the dead, which the dead must be used to by now.
It's a beautiful day--a perfect day for the beach, if it comes to that, and once he finds the flowers the beach is where he goes. There's no military monument or memorial stone to put them on, so the beach seems like the natural default. He doesn't know what any of the flowers are--wild, jungle-grown, violently colored, he thinks one of them might be some kind of lily. It doesn't matter. He stands at the line where the water meets the sand and throws the flowers in, watches the tide carry them out, and he thinks about Al Tallil, five body bags and one of the worst days of his life. Five black body bags, five faces, five boys who never went home. He never wrote to their families--he'd tried but when the time came and the paper was in front of him he'd found himself physically unable to make it and the pen meet--and for years he's regretted it. But what could he say? They were dead and he wasn't, and that in itself presents a problem, a question faced by all survivors, and then the guilt that follows, when the simple fact of being alive feels like a slap in the face of those who are not.
He sits down on the sand and watches the sea carry his flowers away until they're faint spots of color heading towards the horizon and the sun. There's no point to the guilt, he's spent most of the rest of his life trying to learn that, but perhaps he hasn't come as far as he might. And he thinks about the others, about Florence, and Johnny with his family that isn't really his family, Sommer and Wolfe and Escalante, and even Mel, even Santiago, and he thinks that he's seen too far much death for one set of eyes to bear, and that it began at Al Tallil, in Kuwait, in the desert which, maybe, part of him had never wanted to leave.
[OOC: wasn't going to but he wouldn't shut up. open to all; he's not moody so much as introspective.]