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Fear was my most persistent friend. It niggled at the back of my mind, a cold reminder of my own mortality. It crawled into my dreams at night and held me in its cold, unwelcome embrace. It whispered insidiously as I lay among brush and leaves and mud, aiming at the enemy’s shadows moving in the dark.
You were different. You were absolutely fearless. Self assured. When you spoke to us, I felt that there was nothing we could accomplish together.
“Let’s go get those bastards!” You’d yell, and it would seem as if nothing short of the blood-curdling screams we gave in answer would be enough to seal that promise.
I never told you that the real reason I always volunteered to keep watch for our regiment was because I could never sleep at night. The enemies we fought in the daylight became demons in the lamplight, dragging me to the depths of the hell they currently resided in. I would roll around in my sleeping bag and squeeze my eyes shut, pretending that the rattling of the trees wasn’t the sound of the men I had killed with my own hands crawling their way out of the shallow-dug graves to haunt me.
And so I sat there, night after night, kept company by the flickering firelight and your constant slumbering presence.
The nights were cold, the wind rustled in the trees and stung and buffeted at my face as I leaned against a tree and settled in for the long night. But that was okay. The coolness of the night would help me stay awake, help keep my treacherous eyelids from drooping in exhaustion.
It went on for long enough that one night you smacked me over the head as the others were turning in for the night.
“Get some sleep,” you told me. “You’re no use dead on your feet. I’ll keep watch for the rest of the night.
“But-” I protested. I couldn’t tell you why I needed to keep watch, couldn’t let you think anything less of me. But an order was an order, and I couldn’t exactly put myself in your bad graces merely because I was kept up by faceless phantoms at night.
“Soldier,” you said to me, as if you could read my thoughts easily, “there’s nothing in the night but the wind and the trees, and if I catch wind of any of those snakes slinking towards us, you’ll be the first to know. Now go catch some shuteye. That’s an order.”
***
Our regiment had been ordered to advance further into the forest under the cover of the brush and undergrowth. We were met by unanticipated resistance, as if the enemy already knew that we were coming.
I had narrowly avoided being shot, but I had banged my head rather badly and my right leg felt as though it had been shot to hell, although I couldn’t quite recall what exactly had happened in the confusion.
“Can you walk?” Your voice brought me back to the presence, harsh and demanding and concerned all at the same time.
I nodded feebly, feeling the dried mud caked to my face shift at the motion.
“Get up then.” You lent me support with your shoulder and tightened your grip on your gun. I hobbled along as best I could; the rest of the men had gone ahead. You had come back for me alone. The sound of voices traveled through the pines, enunciating foreign syllables and accents. They were coming our way.
“Leave me,” I insisted. I was once again afraid, though I could not afford to be, but the prospect of you dying out here among the silent pines abhorred me. “Sir, if you just leave me here and go join the other guys…”
“No,” you cut me off, injecting your voice with a kind of finality that urged me not to question you. “I’m not leaving you behind. I’d be a shoddy commander if I left a man behind, wouldn’t I?”
So there was that argument. The voices were drawing closer and I was in no condition to flee for the opposite direction. I felt that paralyzing fear stoop over me again, more paralyzing even than my wounded leg, but you acted, shoving us both into an abandoned trench and attempting as best you could to cover us with the undergrowth and brush nearby.
I could hear your quiet shallow breathing just as much as I could my own as I listened to the enemy footsteps drawing nearer. One of them shouted and I flinched, fired their weapon into the distance.
I only had time to be embarrassed at the position we were in afterwards when the enemy had deemed the area satisfactory and withdrawn.
***
Some nights I still couldn’t find sleep. I’d toss and turn and toss some more, the ground unbearably hard and cold and my dreams hauntingly realistic.
You would curl up in your sleeping bag next to me and somewhere in the middle of the night your arm would end up around me. I wasn’t sure if you were aware of what you did, if it was something you did merely subconsciously.
And everytime I had one of those dreams again, the dead men digging their way out of their shallow graves, bullet wounds and bloodstains still fully on display, you would invade my dreams and drive them away, stand there with guns blazing, and I would be able to sleep for a few hours more.
You were driving my fear away.
The other men noticed, of course, what happened at night, but thankfully they never said anything about our grossly inappropriate interactions.
***
Then the war was over. We lined up in full uniform, backs ramrod straight and marching in perfect formation as they made their fancy speeches.
They gave you a medal, a shiny piece of metal that couldn’t possibly be enough to reward the bravery and steadfastness you embodied as a commander. Still, you looked ready to cry when they gave you such an award, overwhelmed by the honor of being one man out of thousands in the same uniform being recognized.
“Congrats, sir,” I said, when the ceremony was long over and we were starting to go our separate ways and go home.
You looked at me, seemingly surprised, “What are you still doing here Corporal? Don’t you have a girl or an old woman to run home to now that your enlistment is over?”
“No,” I said sheepishly, “to be honest I hardly expected to survive when I enlisted. And you sir? I’m sure your family will be very proud of your service.” I nodded at the medal.
You laughed; the sound seemingly sticking in your throat. It didn’t sound right. “Yeah, neither do I. And I doubt they would've been too proud either.”
“So where to now sir?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?” You seemed uncertain, shocked even, shifting uncomfortably in your uniform.
“Where to? I’ll follow you anywhere, if you’ll have me,” I promised, hoping that I wasn’t being too presumptuous. How could I even have dared to ask? Someone like you wouldn’t have wanted an annoying hanger-on like me with you all the time. Yet you smiled and that moment of uncertainty was gone, replaced by the easy confidence you had always commanded.
“I might have a place in mind.”
***
That place turned out to be a quaint little provincial town in the undeveloped countryside. They had scarcely heard of a war, much that you were some sort of celebrated war veteran, content as they were to go about their lives unconcerned with the affairs of the outside world.
We set up a little shop together, let the peace of the morning undisturbed by gunshots or shouting sooth our frayed nerves.
The townspeople were friendly enough, exchanging gossip and information with us as they made their rounds every morning. It was a quiet, peaceful lifestyle.
Then people started dying.
You, of course, being who you were, could never stay quiet. How could you possibly not speak up against the cowards who lurked in the shadows? You had never backed down before in the face of death and you weren’t about to now.
It was always one of the things I loved about you.
***
But I needed to make sure you were okay.
Here my experience spending sleepless nights keeping watch came in handy. I camped out in the huge oak right outside your window and kept my eyes peeled for whatever insidious killer of the night might decide that it might be better if the town had one less member.
I saw your silhouette moving inside, then your door swung open. I climbed down from the tree and prepared my excuses, slightly embarrassed to have been caught loitering outside your home when my own paranoia would not let me sleep at night.
I was completely unprepared for the pain blossoming in my side, the sight of you with a smoking gun in your trembling hands, eyes wild and alight with an old fire that I hadn’t seen since the enemy had besieged our trenches for three days and three nights straight.
And as I lay deliriously on the cool earthen floor, the trickle of red running down my side, listening to you shout and call for the Doctor, panic and horror warring in your voice, I finally understood.
I thought you fearless, but I could see plainly now, that you were just as fearful as the rest of us.