Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
This is the first part of my short story, The Lieutenant. Please would you proofread it.
It was a beautiful, sunny spring day when I arrived with a train in a little town, together with dozens of other recruits. Here we were supposed to spend one year of our compulsory military service, learning how to defend our socialist homeland from the numerous enemies, who were envious of our successful country, and who wanted to carve it up and share among them, like jackals do with their prey.
I looked around me and the scene was not encouraging. The station was unattractive, grey shabby building, and the streets sleepy. Above the roofs of the houses towered high hills covered in the patches of mists, which drifted around them uncovering a dense fir wood. The scene could have been from a romantic film, had it not been for a pungent stench coming probably from a factory. It was so strong that it bet me in my eyes and made them red.
Two soldiers came up to us and ordered us to line up in twos, and lead us through the almost empty streets of the town. The only sign of life were numerous cars with scantily dressed tourists on their way to the Adriatic Sea. They would slow down their foreign cars and look at us with curiosity, and probably with pity. Their goal was beautiful beaches with golden sand and our thick barracks walls.
When we arrived to our final destination we received the same treatment reserved for all recruits on this planet no matter the political system of their countries. And that means taking off civilian clothes and donning military uniforms, cutting hair short and turning into an anonymous cog in an enormous military machine.
They gave us some weeks respite until we took an oath promising to defend our homeland until the last drop of our blood and be ready to sacrifice our own lives. I felt stupid uttering these solemn words because I was not ready to sacrifice my precious life for some communist bigwig, who lived like a king and at his spare time went into woods to shoot bears and deer, while ordinary people hardly made ends meet.
However, the majority of my fellow recruits believed in every single word of the oath and were ready to die for the ideals of socialism and communism. Already from the beginning, I understood that it was impossible to discuss the veracity of these sacred ideals with other people without risk of being seen as a traitor and therefore I decided to keep my mouth closed.
The next day started our drills with weapons and long marches into the hills. We were like cattle and our officers drove us whenever they wanted, forcing us to the limits of our physical and mental endurance, without anyone of us having the courage or own will to refuse to obey the orders, which often seemed completely meaningless. We were so exhausted at the end of the day that everyone was dreaming only of two things: a dinner and a bed.
Watching the evening news in a TV lounge was compulsory, but I would simply close my eyes and imagine my girlfriend, her large, dark eyes and her long dark hair, while the newsreader from the TV set hanging from the ceiling was reading about new achievements of our country, as well as the new decrees issued by the leaders of the Party.
These 30 minutes of ideological propaganda were meant to strengthen our belief in the political system and society, but I had used them to daydreaming, as an escape from the harsh reality. In those early days, I thought I should have fled the country as soon as I had received my draft card. Now I should have been somewhere in the West sitting in a cafe and enjoying warm days outside, but instead I was experiencing the most difficult moments of my life in this godforsaken town.
One day I discussed our predicament with another soldier, who was elder than I was, and whose military service was nearing the end. I told him about my feelings and he chuckled and said, “You’ve seen nothing. Wait until the Lieutenant returns from his holiday.”
I asked him who the Lieutenant was, because once I overheard people talking of him with unease, and the soldier answered, “Wait until you see him. But my advice to you is to give him a wide berth whenever you can.”
TO BE CONTINUED
It was a beautiful, sunny spring day when I arrived with a train in a little town, together with dozens of other recruits. Here we were supposed to spend one year of our compulsory military service, learning how to defend our socialist homeland from the numerous enemies, who were envious of our successful country, and who wanted to carve it up and share among them, like jackals do with their prey.
I looked around me and the scene was not encouraging. The station was unattractive, grey shabby building, and the streets sleepy. Above the roofs of the houses towered high hills covered in the patches of mists, which drifted around them uncovering a dense fir wood. The scene could have been from a romantic film, had it not been for a pungent stench coming probably from a factory. It was so strong that it bet me in my eyes and made them red.
Two soldiers came up to us and ordered us to line up in twos, and lead us through the almost empty streets of the town. The only sign of life were numerous cars with scantily dressed tourists on their way to the Adriatic Sea. They would slow down their foreign cars and look at us with curiosity, and probably with pity. Their goal was beautiful beaches with golden sand and our thick barracks walls.
When we arrived to our final destination we received the same treatment reserved for all recruits on this planet no matter the political system of their countries. And that means taking off civilian clothes and donning military uniforms, cutting hair short and turning into an anonymous cog in an enormous military machine.
They gave us some weeks respite until we took an oath promising to defend our homeland until the last drop of our blood and be ready to sacrifice our own lives. I felt stupid uttering these solemn words because I was not ready to sacrifice my precious life for some communist bigwig, who lived like a king and at his spare time went into woods to shoot bears and deer, while ordinary people hardly made ends meet.
However, the majority of my fellow recruits believed in every single word of the oath and were ready to die for the ideals of socialism and communism. Already from the beginning, I understood that it was impossible to discuss the veracity of these sacred ideals with other people without risk of being seen as a traitor and therefore I decided to keep my mouth closed.
The next day started our drills with weapons and long marches into the hills. We were like cattle and our officers drove us whenever they wanted, forcing us to the limits of our physical and mental endurance, without anyone of us having the courage or own will to refuse to obey the orders, which often seemed completely meaningless. We were so exhausted at the end of the day that everyone was dreaming only of two things: a dinner and a bed.
Watching the evening news in a TV lounge was compulsory, but I would simply close my eyes and imagine my girlfriend, her large, dark eyes and her long dark hair, while the newsreader from the TV set hanging from the ceiling was reading about new achievements of our country, as well as the new decrees issued by the leaders of the Party.
These 30 minutes of ideological propaganda were meant to strengthen our belief in the political system and society, but I had used them to daydreaming, as an escape from the harsh reality. In those early days, I thought I should have fled the country as soon as I had received my draft card. Now I should have been somewhere in the West sitting in a cafe and enjoying warm days outside, but instead I was experiencing the most difficult moments of my life in this godforsaken town.
One day I discussed our predicament with another soldier, who was elder than I was, and whose military service was nearing the end. I told him about my feelings and he chuckled and said, “You’ve seen nothing. Wait until the Lieutenant returns from his holiday.”
I asked him who the Lieutenant was, because once I overheard people talking of him with unease, and the soldier answered, “Wait until you see him. But my advice to you is to give him a wide berth whenever you can.”
TO BE CONTINUED
