jeriendhal | Flash Fic: The Soldier's Friend

Once, when I was six years old, I was very ill with the Scarlet Fever. For two days I lay in bed, feeling cold, then hot, my throat raw as sandpaper. At midnight on the second night, as I lay in bed curled in a ball, eyes closed but awake, unable to sleep, I felt my father's hand touch my forehead. I looked up at him, and saw that he was kneeling beside my bed, dressed in his uniform, wearing his wide-brimmed helmet and with his rifle slung over his back. Beside him was a tall, pale man dressed all in black. He could have been a vicar, but somehow I knew that he wasn't, not really.

"Hello, son," my father said. "I heard you were sick, so I came to see you." I knew he must have been in an awful hurry, for he was still mud spattered from the trenches, his face black from the smoke of the shelling.

"Who's that?" I asked, raising my hand to point at the silent, pale man.

"An old friend," my father said, smiling. "Don't worry, there's no need to be afraid of him."

"Are you home to stay?" I asked.

My father shook his head. "I'm sorry, I have to be going," he said gently. "But everything is going to be all right. Sleep now, son." Then he kissed my cheek, and I feel asleep. When I woke again it was late morning, and my fever had broken.

We got the telegram from the Ministry of War two days later. Mother didn't understand when I told her I'd already known.

* * *

Jerry has been shelling this damned beach for two days. The word is that Command is sending ships to pull us off, but I don't see how. If they sent every ship the Royal Navy has, that still won't be enough to get us all out of here, and they won't be able to get close anyway with all the artillery coming down around us. So we have to just sit and wait, with the enemy at our backs, and the cold sea in front of us, trapped.

When I stick my head up from my foxhole on the beach, I can see a tall, pale man, dressed in black, strolling along it, like he didn't have a care in the world. There's a line of soldiers walking behind him, some in my uniform, some in Jerry's, talking and laughing together. Every once and a while the pale man stops by a foxhole and reaches down to help one of my men out of it, to join the line with his fellows. Once or twice a medic pokes his head up instead to snarl and wave him away. The pale man backs off, nodding as if to apologize, and moves on for a time.

As night falls the shelling gets worse, and the pale man walks at a faster pace along the beach. There's still no word if the ships are really going to come. By tomorrow I may be a prisoner, or I may be walking along the beach with my men behind the pale man.

Either way, I won't be afraid.