As the night breaks into dawn and the sky comes alive, the morning fog rolls through, dampening my uniform and freezing my skin. It billows and curls around the gnarled maple trees and obscures the leaf-strewn ground from my eyes. My dark, sad eyes. Eyes that have been tainted by war. This place would have been beautiful, had it not been for the hellish act that was to be committed here not long from now. May God forgive me. I pull off my cap and wipe my sweaty face on the sleeve of my tattered gray uniform. My legs ache from the long and miserable nights I have seen, but they continue to march mindlessly. I have no control. My worn and splintered musket rubs the skin on my shoulder raw; as it burdens me more with each step I take. Filthy flies follow us; my face is caked with dirt. My hair is long and unkempt, my hands, callused and rough. The steady sloshing of water in my canteen keeps me awake. The leaves are starting to take color as the sun begins to peak over the horizon. We must hurry. Men around me whistle sad tunes and stare at their feet. Being only fourteen years old, it was my choice to join this militia. I now wonder if I made a mistake. Our regiment leader raises his fist and points ahead through the now clearing fog. A thick gray smoke is curling up through the trees . . . a campfire. The enemy is near. I can hear them, just waking up and fixing breakfast. They are young, just like me. We are ordered to remain silent and ready our rifles, and I do both, wondering whose young life I am going to destroy as I stuff the lead bullet down the barrel and ready the gunpowder. A wave of nausea rolls over me. I don’t want to be here. They are young just like me We creep forward about forty yards and take up positions behind some large pines. The fog still protects us. From here, I can make out shadowy figures moving about the enemy camp. They are calm and unaware—none carries their weapons. I look over at the regiment leader and he raises his fist. I raise my weapon in the direction of the enemy. He holds up five fingers. I take aim. He proceeds to slowly drop each finger. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and fire. The loud cracks of gunfire explode around me and the shadowy silhouettes fall. Their cries of pain are unbearable and almost all of them are dead after the first barrage. I drop my rifle and once again, noise explodes around me. Those who remained alive in the camp drop and lie still. Dead men with their surprised eyes thrown wide open. I look down and nearly collapse. A boy, no older than I, lies sprawled on the cold ground, a bullet through his chest, as his open canteen slowly leaks its contents out onto the dirt. No one should have to die this young. I run over to the edge of their encampment and vomit. Taking a small sip from my canteen, I proceed back to my place in line and continue to march. I worry. We are planning a similar attack tomorrow, right here, within this hellish beauty. Zaki Moustafa, 13West Palm Beach, Florida Ben Wisniewski, 12Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
War-and-Holocaust
Patrick’s Boots
One day in 2003, when I was in fifth grade, Ms. Brune partnered me with Brandon so we could quiz each other for an upcoming test. The desks were pulled into pairs, facing each other. I was glad we were by the window because it was hot that day Brandon sat on his feet the way he normally did, playing with his pencils. I sat cross-legged on my chair. We weren’t concentrating very hard because we knew we could study at home. We started talking about the war in Iraq; that’s all anyone talked about. It was on the news every night. Teachers talked about it in hallways when they thought we weren’t listening. Brandon said that one of his relatives had been in Iraq and was killed by a bomb. I told him that my Aunt Kerri had been there over the summer, but she had come home fine with lots of pictures to show. He said I was lucky. I always look forward to Aunt Kerri’s visits. She says “Hey Kiddo!” and gives me a hug. She travels to cool places and has cool stories to tell. In 2003 she had been to Iraq as part of her job. I noticed right away that her hair had grown longer. She arrived at our house with her laptop computer, her camera, and a plastic bag with some Iraqi money. The money was orange and green and had Saddam Hussein’s portrait on it. We sat on the couch and looked at pictures. She complained about jet lag, but she didn’t seem tired. She pointed excitedly at the pictures, explaining what they were. Some were taken from helicopters whose cockpits looked small and uncomfortable, though their rotors looked large and disproportional. In one picture Aunt Kerri was standing in the hatchway of a humvee by a machine gun. In another she was dressed in camouflage, like a soldier, wearing a helmet and holding a rifle. She was smiling. We started talking about the war in Iraq; that’s all anyone talked about The next year, when I was in sixth grade, Mom read in Mom-mom’s and Poppop’s church newsletter that we could send care packages to soldiers who were from her hometown of Bel Air, Maryland. She started gathering things for a soldier named Patrick Adle. He was the nephew of one of Mom-mom’s co-workers. The newsletter said to send foot powder and Chapstick, earplugs to keep the sand out of his ears, and other toiletries. The box sat on the dining room table until she had all the stuff together. Then she packed it up and sealed it with a lot of packing tape. Two months later the package arrived back on our doorstep. When Mom picked me up from school that day, I wanted to tell her about a good grade I got on my math test. Before I could start she told me that the package had come back. When we got home the box was still on the porch. It was dented, the corners pushed in. There was more tape over the tape we had put on. Written on the package in black marker was the word DECEASED. Mom called her mother. She was almost crying. Her voice was higher than usual. We had found out a couple of weeks before that Patrick had been killed in action, but we weren’t expecting the package to come back. We thought they would give the things to somebody else who could use them. For me it was a new thing to feel sad about somebody I didn’t know. In the summer of 2005, we went on vacation to Seattle where it was sunny and cool. When we got back to Baltimore, it was hot and humid. Mom-mom and Pop-pop picked us up at the airport. I sat in the back seat with Mom-mom. It was dark outside; street lamps cast bars of light across the seats. The air conditioning was on high; I was shivering. I wanted to tell Mom-mom about my trip, but Mom-mom and Pop-pop had been on a trip, too. They had been to Philadelphia where they visited a memorial to honor soldiers killed in Iraq. The memorial included the boots of some of the fallen. Patrick Adle’s boots were there. It was obvious Mom-mom wanted to talk. Her voice was quieter than usual, her hands were still. She had held Patrick’s boots in her hands. I think the war impacts us through the things that have been to Iraq and have come back. Johanna Guilfoyle, 12Baltimore, Maryland Ashley Whitesides, 12Grand Junction, Colorado
Journeys to the Past
The floor creaked as Simon crept through his grandparents’ attic towards a large chest in the corner of the room that had caught his eye. In the dusty attic, cobwebs hung from the shelves and bookcases and a thick layer of dust blanketed the mildew-covered furniture. As he timidly tiptoed towards the chest, Simon felt an air of complete silence in the small room, a feeling that the whole world was waiting for him to discover what lay ahead. Carefully raising the key to the large brass lock that secured the maple-wood chest, Simon slowly turned it between his fingers. The key felt smooth and cool, and it fit perfectly in the keyhole. A satisfactory “click” sounded from the chest and he lifted the lid. Inside it was filled with many magnificent treasures: loads and loads of books. His eyes feasted upon the sight and he immediately reached for one of the musty spines, caution instantly gone from his body. And it was only a few moments later when Simon realized that what lay before him were not normal books. “Tuesday, December 23, 1986,” he read aloud into the dimly lit room. Once again he could almost feel the whole room listening to him. The ancient furniture, the peeling wallpaper covering the cracked walls, and even the spiders stopped weaving their webs to listen to Simon’s eloquent voice. Simon was good at reading aloud, and he knew it, for when he read aloud, he could nearly bring the words alive. “Dear Diary” he continued to his audience. “I know you aren’t much of a book, just a few old scraps bound together, but that was all I could find, just like everything is all I could find. When we are still hungry after dinner it is because those few scraps of meat and broken crackers were all I could find, and when we are cold at night it is because the small knit blanket was all I could find. That is the way we live, and I can’t do much to change it. Every day I try looking for an odd job or collecting coins on the busy sidewalks. The way it is is not easy, but the way it is is the way it is.” “Here, take this key as well. It may do you some good in unlocking those other worlds” Simon paused for a moment. Deep sympathy filled his heart for the writer of the tattered diary He was so intrigued that he read on. “My family and I may not have it well off, sleeping in the park, scavenging for scraps of food, begging for money on the streets. Yet every day it seems that I have my children to remind me that I can still be a happy man. In fact, when I think about it, I am happier than most men. I have my family, and whether we don’t have much to eat or not, we are still together. We have our own kind of riches.” The end of the entry made Simon’s mind churn. Although he had not met the man, he felt that he already knew him very well. Simon tried to imagine his own family living that way. All his life he had lived in the same house with a roof over his head. His parents had cooked him meals and bought him things. He could never remember his family being desperate. The silence in the room urged Simon to think to himself, and inside he knew he had changed. * * * As he gently placed the dirty diary onto the floor beside him, Simon began to wonder why his grandparents had the chest in their attic. And how had they obtained the diary of the man? He had been exploring for good books around the house earlier that day when his grandpa had suggested that he look up in the attic. “Who knows what you’ll find up there,” he had told his grandson. “When your grandmother closed down the shop all the books came with us. Here, take this key as well. It may do you some good in unlocking those other worlds.” Simon had taken the key from his grandpa’s wrinkled hand and thanked him. He didn’t question him on what he had been told. He knew it was up to him to find out what was up there. It was more fun that way. It was more fun for him to discover the chest himself, and whatever mysteries lay behind it and inside it. It’s up to me, he thought to himself as he reached into the chest and pulled out another book. As he was opening the front cover, he heard a soft knock on the attic door and in walked his grandma. “Jonah told me he’d given you the key,” she said with a tiny smile on her lips and a subtle sparkle in her eyes. “And it’s about time we showed it to you,” she added. She walked over to where Simon was sitting on a corduroy cushion and seated herself next to him. “I see you’ve found Oscar’s diary,” she said, pointing to the one he had just been reading, which was lying open on the floor. “You know him?” Simon asked incredulously. “He’s a very good friend of mine,” his grandma told him. “This diary from when he was living on the streets became published as a book, with help from me and everyone else at the publishing house. And I’m the lucky owner of the original copy,” she informed him proudly. “How’d you meet the guy? Oscar, I mean.” His grandma began to weave her tale. “While I was on my way to the subway station to visit your grandfather some twenty years ago, I saw a man alongside the sidewalk who was trying to sharpen a stubby pencil on the concrete. In his other hand he was holding a small book. I was in a hurry to see Jonah
