235 JUNIOR ESSAY, THIRD PLACE Jasmine Trayer The Greatest Vow A man not much older than eighteen was running through a battle昀eld when he felt his foot land on something soft. He stopped and looked down at where his foot had rested. There he saw that he had stepped on a patch of poppies growing in the smoke of battle. He reached down and picked a beautiful red poppy. Then he closed his eyes and tried to forget the war for just a minute. He thought of home; his mother baking in the kitchen, his father sitting in his chair reading the newspaper, his younger brother in school, and his dog curled up on the rug in front of the 昀replace. How he longed to be home again! Suddenly he realized how much he wanted to keep them all safe and free. There the young man stood vowing to himself that he would 昀ght long and hard to save the people he loved the most, even if it meant dying. Behind him bullets whizzed by, wounded men cried, bombs exploded, yet the beautiful red and white 昀ag 昀ew triumphantly. *** Fearfully, she opened the letter from the military, read it, buried her head in her hands, and sobbed. Then a slip of paper fell out of the envelope and 昀uttered to the 昀oor. She reached down, picked it up, and read it. It was a note that her son had written about a vow he had made to himself before he died. Her son, the young man, had died to save his family and to 昀ght for the country he loved: Canada.
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