Tremulous Forum
Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: yetshi on July 09, 2007, 09:00:32 am
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I am....
I remember the day I was born.
The crash of steel on steel.
The rough hands of the man that made me.
I remember how careful he was, making sure that I functioned flawlessly.
I remember the first round I fired.
I remember biting the thumb of the man the first time he loaded me.
I sang a song, made of creaking wood and sliding metal, of pinging springs and the hum of my barrel as the rounds flew down it.
I remember how another man sighted me in, so that I would strike where I was most needed.
I remember being carefully packaged and placed into a box.
I remember the gentle swaying of the ship that carried me across the sea, far from my home.
I remember my first owner, how he cleaned me, making sure I was perfect.
I took many lives with his help, and I remember the day he fell.
The wet smack of lead on flesh and the jolt as his body hit the ground.
His blood soaked into my stock as his breath shuttered and his heart slowed.
The silence when he died was deafening.
I remember the other man who scooped me up and used me.
And I remember when he fell as well.
I forget the faces of all that carried me into battle and died but I remember the feel of their hands.
I remember a long time after the fighting ended being looked over.
All my worn out parts were replaced, my scarred stock refinished.
I was boxed up and placed back onto a ship, bound for home once again.
I remember the day I was brought back out.
I sat on a rack in a warehouse surrounded by many like me.
A man packaged me up and placed me into a box.
I was jostled and bumped, dropped and shoved around.
It was nothing compared to what I went through overseas.
The first thing I saw when I was unwrapped was an old man, his hands were scared and arthritic but still strong.
What is this? How can this old man handle me, I was made for war, not for hunting deer.
Take me back to the battlefield, this is no life for me.
He cleaned me and sighted me in, like he knew what he was doing.
When he loaded me I tried to snap closed on my thumb, hoping he would sent me back so I could go to war again, but somehow this old man knew how to avoid that trick.
I remember the old man once, he was sanding my stock and picked out a small sliver of bone that was embedded into my cheek piece.
When he realized what it was he dropped his tools and stared at it for awhile.
I could see his eyes glisten but he never made a sound while he bowed his head, the sobbing rocking his body back and forth.
He buried that sliver in his back yard, bowed his head and said a prayer to the unknown man who it belonged to.
I remember sitting in the closet and listening to him toss and turn in his nightmares then wake up in a cold seat with a scream trapped behind his lips.
The old man sat on his porch with a much younger man and held me in his arms.
As he talked to the boy I listened.
with a tear in his eye he talked about places I knew of.
Sainte-mère-Eglise.
Bastogne.
Caen.
The Elbe River.
As he talked I realized this man had seen as much fighting as I did.
As he talked I thought back on all the men who has used me and all the men who had died.
After all that we had been through we deserved peace, both him and I.
It has been many years now since the old man unwrapped me.
He has long since died, but I have a new owner.
The young man that sat at his grandfathers feet and listened to his stories of war with rapt attention.
Sometimes the young man says to me, "I wish you could tell me your stories, just like my grandfather did."
He sits in his living room cleaning me.
Tomorrow we are going out hunting, I hope we get a nice big deer.
I am Steel and Wood.
I am the sweat of my maker.
I am the love of my new owner.
I am M1 Garand.
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BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-PING!
:cry: (http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/769/saluteoy3.gif)
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Dude, you just wasted 7.92 kb (8108 bytes) of my bandwidth, where do i send the bill?