Yeah, the beginning of the rewritten version of this is somewhere on the second page.
~Crzy
Toy Soldiers
He looked up from his newspaper at the sudden blaring from the television. It was an alert; all military forces were to report immediately. America was finally going to war against Germany, after all these months and years of waiting, conjecture finally became truth. He sighed as he rose to his feet and laid the newspaper down.
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Gardner had known this war was coming, from the first time Germany had shown even the slightest hint of hostility. He had known war was inevitable. He had simply been waiting for it to begin. Joseph Gardner was a tall man with a deep tan from years of the military, and his hair had been bleached blond from long hours out in the sun. His eyes were a sparkling, mirthful blue that hid much of his natural gruffness.
His wife, Annabelle, looked in the room, a pile of clean clothes in her arms. When she saw the look on his face, she knew what had happened, and her face fell. “When?” she asked simply.
“Now,” he said, his face grim. He walked past her out of the room. He didn’t really want to, but he had to, and so would leave as fast as he could. He glanced back at her. “Where’s Richard?” Richard was their eight-year-old son, and the pride and joy of their lives.
“In his room,” she said. “Playing with his army.” On Richard’s insistence, they had bought him a huge set of military toys, complete with army, navy, and air force. Richard claimed that he wanted to be an Admiral someday. While his parents both admired his ambition, they knew how likely that was.
~~~
Richard looked up as the door opened. When he saw his father, dressed smartly in uniform, clean-shaven, with eyes bright and alert, he stood abruptly, knocking some of his toy soldiers down, but he didn’t care. “Where are you going?” asked Richard eagerly.
“You know exactly where,” said the Lieutenant Colonel gravely. “I'm going to fight in Germany. You know I…”
Richard interrupted him. “But do you hafta?”
“Of course I do. I’m a soldier. It’s what I do. If you grow up to be a soldier…”
“Admiral,” corrected Richard.
“Admiral,” amended Joseph. “If you grow up to be an Admiral, you will have to do things you don’t want to do and go places you don’t want to go because you have to serve your country. It’s the way life is.”
“Not fair,” said Richard. He crossed his arms and sat down on his bed.
Joseph sat down next to him. “You’re right. It’s not fair, but I’m a soldier. We don’t get to choose what is fair and what is not fair. You understand that, right?” Richard nodded reluctantly. “Now, while I'm gone, you’re the man of the house. Take care of your mother, okay?” He rose to his feet, brushed his uniform off and looked at Richard.
Richard’s eyes were wide and glazed with the tears he did not want to shed in front of his father. His face had paled and his chin was trembling violently. Joseph smiled half-heartedly and pulled his son into an embrace. Almost immediately, he heard Richard’s control break, and the shoulder of his uniform grew damp.
“I don’t want you to go,” said Richard in a broken voice.
“Why not?” asked Joseph, pulling away to get a good look at his son. Richard’s eyes were red now, and there were tears rolling slowly down his cheeks.
“Cause you’re gonna die.”
“Richard, try to understand something.” He tried to keep his tone gentle, but it was growing more and more gruff. “You see all your soldiers?” He gestured at the mass of soldiers scattered throughout the room. Richard nodded. “They are all depending on me to help them get out of there alive. If I don’t go, they’ll all be killed, and then their families will be sad. I have to go to make sure they live to see their little boys again.”
Richard nodded and rubbed the tears away from his cheeks roughly with the back of his hand. His dad could talk about toy soldiers all he liked, but toy soldiers couldn’t die, and they had no family. “Okay,” he said finally. Then he thought of something. “How many men are you going to be in command of?”
“I don’t know. Around eight hundred.”
“You write me a letter and you tell me how many men you have. And then write me a letter every time you fight and you tell me how many men died.”
“Why?” asked Joseph curiously.
“So I know how many men you’re helping.”
Joseph smiled and nodded.
~~~
The first letter came less than a week later, and the second followed it by only a day or two. There were separate letters for Annabelle and Richard. Richard took his to his room and opened it. He read it out loud. “Richard, yesterday was our first skirmish. It was in Germany, near Berlin. We lost sixty-two good men, and one of them was a close friend of mine. Remember Richard, you are the man of the house. Stay strong for your mother. Keep your heart and prayers with me. Love, Lt. Colonel Joseph Gardner.”
Richard rose to his feet, and, brushing a lock of his blond hair from his face, walked to the other side of the room where the eight hundred and seven men that his father was controlling were congregated. He crouched down and carefully counted out sixty-two men and put them back in the box.
~~~
Two months later, there were less than four hundred men left, and Joseph Gardner was too far forward to get any reinforcements, nor would he get any, until the others broke through the lines of men that were to every side of them. Joseph Gardner knew he was trapped, but they could still send messages…sometimes. And so he could still send letters to Richard. Colonel Gardner sat huddled in a trench, his damp, muddy uniform sticking to his sweaty skin. A cut was slashed down his face and across his left eye. That was why the left side of his face was bandaged and what was sending shooting pains through his entire body at all times.
He rubbed his head and looked down at the letter he was writing. He had fought in wars before, but now that he was reporting his every loss to his son, they seemed all the more terrible. Though he knew this war was no worse than any other he had fought in, and a lot better than some, it troubled him more so than any other. To his surprise, he found that it took some of the burden off his shoulders, to share some of the anguish that he was always feeling, even if it was only with a little boy.
A drop of blood welled up on the tip of his finger from the small cut on his hand, mixed with the dirt on his hand for a second, and then dripped noiselessly onto the letter. Almost, Joseph crumpled it up and began a new one, but realized there was no need. He picked up the pen again and continued writing. “…I will not pretend that war is fun or easy. That is my blood on the paper. I have been wounded, but do not tell your mother that. Another three died of their wounds today. But we are winning. The Germans are almost completely defeated. I will be home within the year. Love, Lt. Colonel Joseph Gardner.” He tucked the letter into his pocket and stretched.
The last three sentences were all but a complete lie. But that was what was probably told on the news anyway, and there was no reason to worry Richard.
His aide jumped down into the trench and saluted. “Sir, there’s some more Germans on approach. At least two companies, sir.”
Joseph rose to his feet. “Then let’s go.” Together, they climbed out of the trench and onto the muddy field, the grass trampled by hundreds of running feet, with pools of blood in the ditches. Some bodies still lay sprawled across the ground, with flies buzzing around them. The skies, gray and heavy, loomed ominously above.
~~~
After a year of war, both sides had reached a definite stalemate. After seven months of being trapped, Joseph Gardner and his remaining hundred and thirty-two men were freed. He was promoted to a full Colonel and given a new command. By the end of the second year, it seemed like the Germans were finally starting to pull ahead. After several months of fighting, they were pushed back again, and Joseph was promoted again, to a Brigadier General. In the third year of the war, the Americans (along with their European allies) were making a noticeable dent in Germany’s forces. The new year came along with yet another promotion for Joseph, who was making himself quite famous in the war, though it was hard for anyone to ever see him, as he was usually out there fighting with his men, though all his superiors forbade it.
One day, when he was writing another letter to his son (he still did this faithfully, and sometimes now, Richard wrote back), an aide came in and saw the famous man hunched over his desk (for he was, for once, back in headquarters) and said, “Sir?”
Joseph looked up. As a result of his first battle, he had lost his left eye, and now wore an eyepatch, and no one dared make fun of him for it. “Yes, Captain?”
“May I ask what you’re doing, sir?”
Joseph smiled. “Sure. I’m writing a letter to my son.”
“You have a son, sir?” Somehow, the Captain had got the impression that the general was all alone in the world.
“Yes, I do. Now, do you have news for me?”
“We have taken Berlin, sir. But we are meeting heavy resistance, sir.”
Joseph smiled and rose to his feet, tucking the letter into his pocket. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go and help them.”
“No, sir. General Newland has forbidden you to go out and fight.”
“He has forbidden me to go so many times I have lost count. I will go.”
~~~
The fighting in Berlin was fiercer than anyone anticipated, and many of the men that went in to fight were killed, and most of the rest were wounded. Major General Joseph Gardner was one of them. He had been patrolling a street when a man had popped up in a window and fired five shots into Gardner’s chest.
Now Gardner lay in a hospital, sometimes conscious, sometimes not. Now was one of his moments of consciousness. He pulled out the unfinished letters from his pocket, and tried to write. A stream of blood from his hand coated both letters in blood. He gasped for breath, and in that moment, he knew he was going to die.
Captain Ewing came to the General’s side. “Sir?”
His voice came out in strained gasps. “I'm going to…die, aren’t I, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.” It had always been unwise to lie to General Gardner.
Gardner nodded. “Send my letters to my family.” He thrust the bloody letters into Ewing’s hands. “Finish the letter to my son. Tell him…tell him…only one soldier died. Tell him…that one soldier was…was me. Do that for me, Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ewing sadly. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Richard.” Gardner’s eyes closed, and he gasped for breath. Then he lay still, and Ewing bowed his head. A great man was dead.
~~~
Richard knew something was wrong from the second he opened the letter. Most of the letters his father had written him had had some blood on them, but this one was coated in it. He lay it carefully out, trying not to rip it. “Dearest Richard, we broke into Berlin. The Germans now know the taste of defeat. Tell your mother I shall be returning home soon, and with more glory than any of you could imagine. We lost seven men today. There is still some resistance in this place, and we cannot find the shooters. All in good time, though. Please write to me.” Then there was a long gap, and some writing in another hand. “Your father was an inspiration to all men who knew him. He fought even when his superiors forbade him to. He is half the reason we are winning this war. During a patrol in Berlin, one man was shot. That was your father. He died in a field hospital from his wounds. He told me that the single thing that kept him from losing his mind in the war was that he could write to you. One soldier died today, but it is as if the whole army died with him. He will be sorely missed. Yours sincerely, Captain Paul Ewing.”
Richard held the letter, staring at it in disbelief. His eyes were wide; this couldn’t happen. His father just didn’t die. That wasn’t how it worked.
He walked over to his mass of soldiers (that had gotten steadily larger over the years) and picked up just one. He sat on the floor with the soldier in his hand and looked at it. This wasn’t the same. Before, he could take the soldiers away without a second thought; but then again, he hadn’t known the men they represented. He just couldn’t put his father back in the box as if he had never existed.
So he rose back to his feet, and put the soldier in his pocket. He carried the toy soldier with him every where he went; through high school and college. Then he entered the navy, and even then, he carried the little toy soldier in his pocket.
And whenever someone asked why he carried it, he always looked at them frankly, and said, “To remind me that toy soldiers are not the real thing.”
