2006 SECOND PLACE

WHAT ABOUT PEACE?
Joua Lor
18 years old, Minnesota

The sky was pitch; the only light came from the occasional explosion that occurred on the other side of the deserted city. Haggard, impatient soldiers moved around restlessly inside a ruined structure that was a skeleton of its former glory. Driven out by the war, people of the city had taken whatever they could . They had even managed to take with them that feeling of life that permeated the air of all lived-in places.

Now the bone-deep emptiness gnawed at the soldiers, making them shiver inside their flaks despite the humidity. The wind moaned through the barren structures around them, causing sand and lighter debris to shuffle in random paths. Nothing else stirred.

They were a ragged band of no more than ten men, all still quite young in age but their eyes were those of old men who had seen and done too much. One soldier, no more significant in appearance than any of the others, made an affirmative gesture with one hand and placed the other over his concealed headset.

Immediately the rest ceased all movement, as if they had suddenly been turned off by a switch. Their attention was riveted to that one soldier. He waited; he could almost feel his comrades' hearts beat with the same anxiety, dread, and hope that his pounded with.

They had been stationed for over six months now in this fallen city. The situation had been declared hopeless for a month and they all longed for the order to pack up and leave.

The soldier peered at the men surrounding him. In each perusal, he saw a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a friend. He saw many things that they were. But in his mind he also saw their deaths; lying in a pool of their own blood as they breathed their last not as any of the above but as a soldier to a lost cause.

Dawn silently crept up on them.

The static in his ears became understandable. Finally, he nodded and suddenly hearts became lighter, unknown weights dropped off shoulders or perhaps gravity had decided to give them a break, it didn't matter.

Each man readied his own gear and together they started for the direction of the new sunrise. At the edge of the city on a bluff, he turned back to watch the ever rising smoke and fiery blazes. The sound of gunfire was still quite clear. Others stopped to wait for him; some continued on, never wanting to look back. Another moved to stand by the man's side. To his companion on the bluff, the first asked, as he looked at the devastated city, "What about peace?"

Unable to find the answer, they strode off. They were only soldiers after all.