He sat there, head in his hands, as their truck delivered them across the blasted countryside. A soldier, virtually alone, his thoughts and worries of what was to come were nearly visible behind his eyes. Faintly, he was aware of a roaring laughter from his friends travelling with him to their station. The truck slowed to a halt, and he was jolted back to reality by a slap on his shoulder. “Still alive, [REDACTED]?” the sergeant asked. He nodded absently, grabbed a rifle and jumped out the truck. The moment he hit the ground, the magnitude of what was happening finally caught up to his train of thought. Begrudgingly, he joined the tide of bodies marching silently through the Esperance downpour, eyes turned downwards, and jackets pulled up tight around their necks. Through the rainy haze, he could just make out a set of iron gates marked with two poorly etched and fading words: 'Adelaide Front'.
Entering the gates, a series of checkpoints were arrayed against them; identification, weapons registering, equipment checks, contraband hand-ins and so much more. The excessiveness seemed almost unreal. That was until he thought of his previous life, and he shivered. As he approached the final check, a pit was slowly opening deep inside. The final check was a military identification; the worst one yet. “Prepare for your new lives, friends! Forgone is the need to remember names, as our Gracious Government have constructed a new system: NUMBERS!! Simply receive your number from your commanding officer, and be on your way!” the announcement speaker blared. Unfortunately, he had the misfortune of standing right next to it, and all he could hear was an earful of tinnitus. He stepped up to the terminal. “Name?” the commander barked. “[REDACTED], sir.” “Not anymore, son. You are now %@!#. Welcome.” A grate slid open, and a helmet slid through. ^%*#% grabbed it, and continued on his way. The barracks was the final obstacle for him to overcome. It was an extremely worn building, at least from the outside; windows boarded up, the ones that weren't half smashed. He grabbed hold of the door handle, and the door simply fell. “Don’t worry, it does that all the time! Just get in and get a bunk.” The sergeant, he assumed, seemed like a nice enough fellow. He strolled towards ^&%*$ and pointed at an empty bunk at the far end. “There you go sunshine, your slice of heaven.” The sergeant returned to his bunk, and %^*^% set his bag, rifle and helmet down next to his own bunk. After such a draining time in the cold, he collapsed on his bed and began to dose off. The last thing he saw before closing his eyes, a poster. A poster that read ‘The Adelaide Front. Get Out While You Can.’ He pondered for a second, but exhaustion overcame him, and sleep’s embrace comforted him, for what felt like the final time.
“Weeks later, he would come to understand the ‘Adelaide Front’.”
He stood guard at the door to his trench officer’s room, the horrible winter wind worming it's way through his jacket, making him flinch at the feeling. He yawned, the repetitiveness of this duty and the onset of slight insomnia getting to him. A horn bought him back to reality. The warning siren had blared harshly, foretelling of an enemy charge. He scrambled to load a rifle and get into position along the trench's lip. As he fell into the well-worked groove he had made in the dirt for himself, the sudden fog obscured him from seeing anything. At that moment, the wind picked up, and pushed his helmet over his eyes. As he moved it up so he could see, he wished he hadn't. The sight he beheld cut worse than any drill master beating. The fog wasn't what he thought. The gas mines the engineers placed had detonated. He was enthralled in what he saw; exposed bones, tears of blood, fingers falling like dropped hot dogs. He couldn't look away. It was horrible. A strong hand yanked him down into the trench and reality. "GAS MASK SOLDIER." His sergeant forced his mask onto his head and threw him into the makeshift dormitory they had dug out in the soft ground. As he sat there, rocking to comfort himself, he wasn’t sure what was worse: the scenes of melting flesh or their screams. After hours on end of otherworldly shrieks, the sergeant ordered everyone out to 'clean up'. 'Clean-up' was code for putting bullets through the survivors. He approached one body, still writhing in pain. As he approached, he felt a sense of familiarity emanating from the corpse. He picked up the body, and he collapsed to the floor. It had the face of his friend; a friend that had betrayed his country and moved away to study abroad. Look where it got him, lying dead on some battlefield instead of curing cancer. He felt nothing. He could feel nothing. Suddenly, the corpse's hand reached up and placed its hand on his shoulder. It cried, and he cried with his friend. He wept and shivered and cried some more. Why did this happen? Why was he forced to fight for a Government who clearly did not care? It wasn't fair. His thoughts ended there, though, as a gun shot rang out, and his friend-corpse moved no more. His gaze rose up to the person standing opposite him. The sergeant stood there, two phrases dripped from his mouth: “No survivors, no crime.” The sergeant blew off the steam from their sidearm and moved away. All he could do was sit there.
“This was the moment He decided to take the biggest risk of his life.”
That night, he slipped into the canteen line for more rations. He broke into the storage shed for extra munitions. Then, he slipped out of camp during the war table meeting. This was for the best, he told himself. His objective? The East’s nearest checkpoint on the border, a week’s trek from where he had been stationed. He had no idea how to get to his destination, only that he had to. He took one last glance back along the trench that had been his home for the last few months. Was deserting an easy choice? No. Was it the right one? Probably not. But he did not want to see any more friends die, and he did not want to serve an evil, uncaring Government anymore.
For days he trudged alone through the harsh arid conditions of the desert border. All throughout the journey, he forced to live like a homeless man in any town or settlement he came across. Stealing food when vendors weren't looking, sleeping in gutters for shelter. But worst of all, he had to hide from local militias of both sides of the war. To one side, he was a hated enemy. To the other, a filthy traitor. There was some common ground, at least; both wanted him dead. As the journey dragged on, his supplies dwindled. A pit stop was his only option. However, calling back maps from the previous town, there were no more settlements between him and the Checkpoint. He crested a hill, surveying the landscape. The only thing in sight was a rapidly approaching convoy. It would have to do.
“We’ll skip what happened next, but just know that he hated himself for what he did.”
The adrenaline was still pumping. Quickly, he gathered the supplies he needed: ammo, food, water, fresh clothes, anything he could think he might need, he grabbed. He could not stay long. Getting caught raiding a convoy would make his situation so much worse, and he did not need that right pressure right now. After leaving the supply trailer, he could just make out the shape of a fleet of trucks following hard on the heels of the convoy. Not good, he thought. So, he took off, sprinting headfirst into the landscape surrounding the wrecked convoy, not wanting to be caught when he was so close to the checkpoint, so close to being safe from the horrible Government. It didn’t work. The truck was moving faster than he originally thought. The convoy must have put out a distress beacon. It caught up easily, the troops contained within spilling out and opening fire. He was forced to go to ground, diving behind a slight crest in the landscape. Twisting onto his back, he returned fire, claiming two lives in the opening volley. The other soldiers, whether out of well-drilled instinct or fear he couldn’t tell, leapt back behind the truck open doors. He took the opportunity and continued his escape into the bush, not wanting his whereabouts to be known to the enemy.
Once he had covered a large enough distance, he began his journey yet again. One day left, one day in the journey, he thought. He rested atop a hill for that night, collecting his sanity for the relentless interrogations to come once he had surrendered to the Checkpoint’s guards. In the morning, he cleaned up the fire and put a fresh change of clothes on. He grabbed his remaining rations, ammunition and slung his rifle over his shoulder. Now, he could begin the last stretch to freedom. Onwards he walked, pushing through the searing mental anguish of what he had endured over the course of the last months. Over hills and through valleys he marched, not daring to stop when he was so close to his objective. He reached the top of one, final hill. Then, he saw it; and it was beautiful. The Checkpoint. A wonderful, small building with wire fences stretching off into the distance, a small boom gate preventing any vehicle from speeding through. Taking a deep breath, he ran down the almost vertical cliff, utilising the momentum to run even faster. The guards saw him and came out to meet him on bikes. He stopped, threw his weapon far away from him, and fell to his knees. “I give up. Take me. Please!” he cried out to the guards, who had now surrounded him. The guards trained their rifles on the man, and one reached to his shoulder for a radio. The man was happy, for he knew that soon he would be free of the tyranny of Western Australia, and free to rejoin the other states that they had so quickly forsaken.
“But he would not experience that freedom. As the guards received their orders on what to do with the prisoner, a thunderclap rang out from the heavens. The man fell, still at last, a chunk missing from his head and a smile upon his face. As the guards took up positions around the man's body, none saw the black-clad rifleman pack away his weapon and descend down from his perch. And that’s how the story ends. Now class, I want you to answer questions 5-10 about the novel, and if you don’t, it becomes homework.”
