Tag, You’re It

by Hannah Northey, Emmaus Christian School

Ruby didn’t know why her mother had brought her here.

The drive had been long, certainly over an hour. Her mother was sitting on a bench, looking into the distance at something Ruby couldn’t see. Ruby bounded onto the luscious field, away from the playground her mother had taken her to for the afternoon.

“Don’t go too far!” her mother complained.

“Okay!” Ruby dashed into the midst of the forest, stopping to climb one of the trees. Looking up, she saw some colourful birds singing high in the branches. She eagerly scaled up trying to reach them, but they were just too high. As Ruby was reaching for another branch, the one underneath her snapped and she crashed to the ground.

Then suddenly everything went black.

“Come on. Get up, mate.”

I glanced up foggily at my friend. I don’t know how I knew he was my friend, but I did.

We had been hit hard last night. My team had just got back from scouting and then our enemies had hit us. I’d watched many of my men die that night, and the memory was fresh in my mind.

I didn’t know how I knew all this… or what was going on. I felt like I was in someone else’s memory. But whose? And why?

“Ugh,” I grunted back to him, tossing aside the single blanket I had and pushing off the ground. “This war feels never-ending.”

What war, though?

“Hey, we’re gonna hit them back. Jake’s team got back and we know where they are camping for the night.”

“What time is it?”

“Three in the morning.”

“Let’s get those wretches!” I grinned.

His face reflected mine and I knew we both felt the need to get revenge on the friends we had lost. We all just wanted this war to end once and for all. 

Their enemy’s camp was bigger than we thought, with hundreds of men who had arrived overnight. The odds were ten to one. I watched as my friend fell to the ground, multiple bullets tearing through him. I screamed his name. All I could taste was blood. The mission was wrecked. We were damned. I removed a small grenade out of my pocket. Holding a hand to my dog tag around my neck, I pulled the pin.

Gasping, Ruby shot up and tried to make sense of her surroundings. She looked up at the forest encircling her, inhaling the fresh air and shakily lifted herself up, remembering she was at the park with her mum. She felt something digging into her fingers and looked at a rusted dog tag on a chain. Squinting, she read the writing: Charles J. Jones.

Her mother’s maiden name was Jones. Ruby finally made the lost connection to her Granddad, who had died at war. She had never met him, but she would bring hope and new life to his military dog tag. Clenching it tightly in her small fingers, she slowly walked back to her mother.