www.nb.legion.ca 49 NEWBRUNSWICKCOMMANDThe Royal Canadian Legion LégionRoyale CanadienneDIRECTIONNOUVEAU-BRUNSWICK Seventeen year old soldier Standing on that crowded platform; I never felt so alone. My sadness nearly suffocated me. In the simplest terms; I was scared. I was absolutely terrified of going off to war and never returning. I feared that my death would be untimely, like many soldiers are. Through it all, I was even more horrified of who I would be if I stayed. I stepped onto the train and found my seat. I stared out the window as the train left the station. I wanted to remember everything about my city; knowing this may be the last time I ever see it. That reality crushed me. It reminded me that I would never be just seventeen years old; I would always be a soldier. A nameless soldier who lied and enlisted in the war. I never realized how beautiful New Brunswick was until I was leaving it for the last time. Its white snow and frost covered branches danced past my window. I would have given anything to be ten years old again and rolling around in my blizzard-touched lawn. To throw snowballs at my sister and run when she threw them back. I wished to go back to when that was the worst war I’d ever known, but wishing doesn’t work on impossible things. It took almost two days to get from Saint John to my basic training camp. Almost two long, excruciating days that I was left alone with my thoughts. Regrets and guilts clouded my mind and left me feeling empty. I began to realize that seventeen years is too short to live a good life. The next eight weeks were cold and lonely. Training was difficult and the lack of general happiness didn’t help. The only thing getting me through it was the occasional letters from my family, but even those were bittersweet. Throughout my years as a soldier, I received letters from children back in Canada telling stories about home. They provided some much needed light in my otherwise miserable days. I was in many battles and firefights but by a miracle I was still holding on. I began to have a little hope that I could go home someday. One night, I was running when a bomb exploded next to me. I was thrown up in the air and smashed into the ground. Thousands of pounds of dirt and shrapnel crushed me; leaving me paralyzed. At this point I knew my death was inevitable. I was running out of air quickly. All the things I had never said and all the things I never did came rushing back to me. All the ghosts of my past and the memories of the seventeen short years living in Saint John filled my head. As I drew my last breath, I thought of my mother, my father, my sister and my little town in a small province in Canada. I calmly exhaled, and then everything just stopped. Intermediate Essay/Rédaction intermédiaire Marley Hazen, Grade 8 student/élève de la 8e année - Barnhill Memorial School As originally submitted for competition / Tel que soumis initialement au concours
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