Part 1: Duty Of A Man

[Segmentation Of Represent]

I think the title should be the other way around, but that's how I first published it on a website, so i'll keep it that way. The website being

www.pulsehead.com

Check me out, my name's 'Fart' on it. Haha. Enjoy the story, anyway.

---------------------------------

I remember grasping the rifle from off the sand. The grains worked their way under my nails. I was sodden with the bloody water from when I first tumbled out of the steel boat and my hair was plastered to my head with the exception of a couple of strands arcing over my bruised forehead.

Bullets rattled all around me. My brain whizzed. I was confused, hurting. I didn't know where to look, what to do. I was dumbstruck. Men were running, falling, stumbling, weeping, hugging their knees and weapons, curled against bodies, screaming … dying.

I remember the comfortable heat my urine gave off when it spread across my trousers and ran down my legs, dripping into my tattered boots. It's an understatement to say that I was terrified at the time. My legs went numb. I couldn't stand. I simply sat there, in amidst the terror that was the war. My jaw was hanging open slightly. A man ran in front of me, and in that moment he was riddled with lead. He just fell. Another limp body. Another name to add to the engravings on a gravestone. Sergeant Jean-Pierre the 1st had come up behind me, and tried to pick me up and get me to run and do what I had to do. To do my duty. To fight. He had grabbed me by the shoulders, and started tossing me about. I didn't do anything, I just stared dumbly back at him. His face creased into desperation, his teeth clenched and gritted. He brought back his arm and I saw that his hand had been formed into a fist. His knuckles grew white with pressure, the bones harder than ever.

He used to do bare-knuckle boxing.

He broke my nose with ease, but later on he said it was a necessity. He told me that if he had just left me, I was another sitting duck for the 'Nazi bastards'. The ridge of the bone jutted out of my skin, the pain was **** incredible. That was when the tears started to make their way down my cheek. That was when the bolt slid home, and reality struck me harder than ever. Harder than that fist, and I can tell you, that's damn hard.

I started running. I gripped that mother-**** gun and I ran. It wasn't often that I cursed. I used to be at Oxford University for 2 years before the War started, although my true nationality is French. My mother was from that pleasant green land they called Britain, and she taught me all the English I needed to know. But then I wanted to enlist, do my country proud. To do my COUNTRIES proud. La Belle France. Great Britain. My family disapproved. Apparently, I was to get a decent education. To live to be an old, happily married and wealthy man. They had told me the statistics, the amount that had died already. I was suspicious that the numbers had been grossly exaggerated, but even if they were true my homes were calling out to me. They needed me.

So there I was. Fighting on the beaches of Normandy. There were hardly any French about. The Last I had heard of there were 58 French troops, who had all lived in Britain for the use of education and universities. It was mainly the British and the Yanks that were fighting here. But we were all allies.

That night, the remaining soldiers who hadn't had their limbs blown off, their arms and legs reduced to mere bony stumps, the soldiers who hadn't had or didn't need any operations would all mingle together, collecting and speaking of their sorrowful thoughts.

Now, back to the beaches.

End of Part 1.