The Final Execution

They were the last men alive in the field. All his men lay dead, having sacrificed their lives for their country. Dead bodies were strewn all over the field. He was standing in front of the boy, holding a shotgun at him. He waited as the boy finished his prayers. He felt it would be inhuman to deny a person some final moments of peace with their God, even if that person was a sworn enemy of his country. He could feel the grip on the barrel of his gun. He could feel its power. The power to snuff life out in the most painless way possible. He had always revered this power and he had never hesitated in using it at the enemy.

But something was different this time. The grip felt wrong. The gun in his hand felt odd, repulsive even. His finger on the trigger was trembling to the surges of conflicts between his conscience and his mind. He loosened the grip of his finger on the trigger, lest he fire unknowingly at the boy.

What was different this time, he asked himself. What separated this execution from the several others he had conducted in various places of the world? In his 15 years of military service, shooting an enemy had never been so difficult. There had been times when he had killed unsuspecting enemy troops from behind. A single swift movement with his knife or a single pull at the trigger and an entire organism lay waste in front of him. His motivation had always been to fight for his country. He had always been his country’s knight, slaying down the evil dragons.

He shifted his focus from down the barrel of the gun to the boy’s face. The face had a serene look and yet tears rolled down his cheek from his closed eyes. Terror and peace were flickering on and off in his expressions. He watched as the boy unstrapped his helmet and pulled it off his head, placed it by his side. Under all the fatigue and the war injuries, the boy in reality was just a boy. He could not have had been more than 19 years old. He didn’t find this shocking. His own side had recruited many from the younger demographic. The fact that the boy was so young hit a chord deep down in his heart. He had just received the news that his wife was now carrying his child. And if the war didn’t get over any time soon, his son would, sure enough, be joining the army. He could not reconcile with the fact that his son may have to live his life through a war that was not his. He thought that this should provide for more than enough motivation to shoot the enemy and finish the war sooner.

But he realised that the enemy was as human as he was. The feeling of being wronged, the impulse to fight for their right and the emotion of revenge flowed through every human. He kills one of theirs, sure enough they would bring more and kill one of his. Should he spare the boy for the impossible hope that it would somehow instigate a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the end of war? It certainly did not seem practical. And yet, his heart was tipping more and more towards it.

He remembered all his mates that were lying face down in the field around him. Surely he should shoot the boy to avenge them. Then he saw that the boy was alone too. He had lost his mates too. And at such an age, the boys must have been very close in a hostile environment like this. He remembered when he had signed up for the army. After every training drill, they would dine together and have the heartiest laughs even though each of them knew about the risk they had signed up. They were all brothers. Away from their family, they had clustered together to form their own. He had not forgotten the day when he had heard the news about the death of one of his mates. He was filled with rage and a sudden burst of energy to wipe out the entire enemy race. The first time that he killed someone, he expected that the anger would somehow come to rest. But it lay as it was. And each time he killed, all he ever wanted was for that anger to subside. It never happened. And now, as he aimed the gun at the boy in the camouflage suit, suddenly he felt nothing.

He was now at the verge of a serious nervous breakdown. Never before in his entire life, did he ever have to look for a reason to kill an enemy troop. All he needed was a single justification that the boy did not deserve to live on this planet. The boy’s emotions were somehow catching hold of him. It was as if he had reached the tipping point. He had lost the will to kill a person just because they lived in a different geographical region than his. Fighting a war for his country was not a reason good enough to kill that little boy who may have had been forcefully stuffed into this uniform and sent to fight a war by those who never were in the battlefield themselves. He felt as if every bullet sent in that boy’s direction would ultimately come back and hit one of his children. As he watched the boy complete the final passages of his prayer, he knew there was only one thing he could really do.

“As he entered the woods, he looked back one last time. He saw the man still standing over there, with the gun by his side and a certain air of satisfaction in his posture. He was shocked and yet grateful for the man who had spared his life. The man handed him a piece of bread, some water and a map, all of this when the boy expexted a bullet in his head. The man’s gesture made him want to ignore all that was told to them about the enemy. He could see the weariness and the wear and tear of the war on his face. And it was the man’s genuine smile that somehow made him less enemy and more human. Maybe they were not so different after all. Maybe this war was really just a big pile of misunderstanding, he thought. He may forget his own face, but the smile on that man’s face would last for a lifetime.”