To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
But young men think it is, and we were young.
David was waiting for death.
Of all the places on earth where he wanted to be, this muddy field in northern France was undoubtedly at the bottom of the list. He had wanted to go to France once - wanted to travel all over the world, in fact, in the way young people often do. Well, he'd seen France now, and wanted nothing more than to get out of it. Even his home in a small town in north-west Victoria, hell-hole that it had seemed at the time, was a thousand times more preferable than this. At least there, he was dry, even if summer was an oven he couldn't get out of. Here, he was wet, freezing cold most of the time - and there was the not-so-negligible chance of being shot or blown up. But then, in the battlefields of France, he didn't have to face his father, which was almost compensation for the nightmare he now found himself in.
His father. He had always got on reasonably well with him. Both of them were relatively quiet, and generally more interested in working than talking. There was always plenty of work to do on the farm, and if Dad sometimes lost his temper when something went wrong, well, what man wouldn't yell and swear a bit if the harvester broke down? So long as David took care to not be responsible for any of those problems, everything was OK. But David wasn't Superman, and some mistakes were inevitable. When that happened, David did whatever he could to fix it before Dad found out. It didn't always work, though. Once, when David bogged the truck in a paddock, he had tried to pull the truck out himself with the tractor, only to bog the tractor as well. Dad was furious, and the bruises from the chastisement that followed lingered for a week.
David's mother never interfered in these affairs. She knew her role as a good farmer's wife, which was to keep the house clean and food on the table. She wasn't a particularly weak person, but the dual dictates of society and prudence required her to keep silent unless spoken to. It wasn't that David's father was a violent man, exactly, just that when he got angry, he got very angry, and felt under no restraints in letting it out. Most of the time, though, the house was relatively peaceful.
December 15th 1943 was a date that would stay forever in David's mind. It was the last day he had seen his parents and, predictably, it was not a happy parting. It was David's birthday, though that mattered little to David, and less to his father. His mother did what she could to make the day special by making him a special breakfast, but before David had time to eat more than half of it, Dad was calling him out for work, the truck already running. Birthday or not, it was a workday, and there was plenty of work to do, especially with a forty-two-degree day forecast.
David's father was a strong man, but he was not superhuman, so by 11 o'clock the heat was beginning to tell even on him, and he decided it was time for a break. As usual, neither spoke as Dad drove the truck back to the house. There was no warning when the bombshell - a metaphorical one presaging the many real ones to follow - fell on David.
"Go and get cleaned up, David," said his father. "We'll head into town after lunch."
"What for?" said David, puzzled. "We've still got plenty of feed, don't we?"
"Yes, but what's that got to do with it?" replied his father.
"Then what are we going into town for?" said David.
Dad appeared surprised. "Why, to take you in to the recruitment office, of course. I'd have thought you of all people would know what today is."
Fear clutched at his heart and froze his stomach as David realised what his father intended. He had thought - hoped - that maybe Dad needed him on the farm too much to send him to war. He had sent all his brothers, and even his sister was working in a hospital in London, but he had hoped ... Perhaps there was still a chance. "Dad, I - I -" he stuttered.
"What? Well, come on, spit it out," Dad replied.
"I - I don't want to go. To war, I mean," he said falteringly.
"What? Don't want to go? Don't want to fight? Don't want to defend your country?" Dad's confusion was gradually replaced by understanding, rage building as he asked each question. "Why the hell not?" He was shouting now, and the force of his voice caused David to wilt.
"I - like it here," he said in a small voice.
"What? Like it here?" his father yelled. "Of course you like it here. It's a great country we've got here, and do you know why? It's because people have fought and died to make it that way! Great countries like this don't just come, they need to be worked at! Fought for, David! You think you can just sit back and let everyone else fight for you, while you take it easy safe and comfortable here on the farm? Like hell you will! What kind of yellow scum are you? Even your sister's got more guts than you. There's no way I'll let you disgrace the family by sitting on your backside while the rest of us put it on the line for our country. You know what you're going to do? You're going to go in there and -"
But David could take no more. He ran from the room, pursued by his father's roaring. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother had stopped in the middle of making lunch, listening to her husband tear her son to shreds. Their eyes met, and a goodbye was spoken that was silent, heartfelt, eternal. David ran from the house, and didn't stop running until he got to the recruiting office, five kilometres away.
He hated his father, David knew, but more than that, he hated himself, for never having the guts to say no to him. That he had never really had a chance was something he would never learn. A moment later, the first mortar shell of a German counterattack landed barely a metre from him, and David became another member of his father to die, gloriously as it was supposed, on the field of battle.