TROY

Jeff had taught classics before the war and could recite poems by Horace and Virgil from memory either in English or as easily in the original Latin. When he’d read to his class from the Iliad he’d been proud that he was passing on to another generation the same joy of discovery which he himself had felt. Now he was on the shore of the Dardanelles just a bit of water and a short march from Homer’s Troy.

He had been told in training not to fear the sound of incoming artillery fire. “You won’t hear the one that gets you,” he’d been told. The sergeant who told him that had been right. He had not heard the shell nor had he felt an instant hurt when his leg was blown off. He did know he’d been wounded. He had felt the pressure wave that knocked him on his ass and seen the comrade who wrapped his stub in a shirt to hide it from him. He hoped that the wound would end the war for him.

The barrage continued but Jeff was deaf to it for his eardrums had been pierced. He hardly knew or cared who the others around him were or what they were doing. He felt the impact of boots when someone ran past his head, but it didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that the sky was no longer blue and the air was full of dirt and scrap. Jeff’s eyes were rolling and his mind was somewhere far away or thinking of nothing at all.

Homer. The Iliad. So many brave warriors dying without the Christian belief in an afterlife. All had been brave in battle, then they too had lay wounded and facing their end. Like them he knew that it was useless to pray but like a child he was doing so. Oh my God I am heartily sorry…. He was dying a Homeric coward, pleading to be blessed with a Christian afterlife that he had not really believed in since childhood. Now he understood Homer as he had never before. Nothing mattered. Even family honor no longer mattered. Nothing had ever mattered and “darkness descended on his eyes.”