war (short story

war

short story

FIFI IMBERGER It means something different to everyone. To you, it could be the constant war between you and your siblings, and to your mum, it could be the competition of finding the lowest prices at your local supermarket. Despite war being defined as a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country, to some people that’s not how they see war. My personal idea of war relates directly to the definition. *** They told us the ‘Secret War’ in Laos was meant to slow down the eventual march towards the West from Vietnam. The war was kept a secret, as secret as you could keep a war. In doing so many trained soldiers retreated; it became guerilla warfare. Due to the lack of training and military weapons, many non-traditional methods were used, like dropping large rocks from an aircraft onto a truck convoy that was right out in the open. Regular people were being trained and turned into unrecognisable soldiers who did things that they never would have done otherwise. The soldiers who guarded the path at Laos were thugs with a terrorists’ mindset; they did barbaric things to anyone who was captured.

I was captured. I was tormented and beaten until I could no longer think straight. Innocent people around me were torn away and they turned their back on me, I lost almost all sanity and any hope of rescue. *** 70,000 people were said to have died in that ‘secret war.’ I don’t see it to be a secret anymore. We see the drastic measures that people influenced by their internal ‘secret war’ go to just to get their next hit or drink. We see regular people become unrecognisable, all because of the strong compulsion that led them to submit to the hold that their addiction had on them. They are captured by their addiction. Tormented into the mindset of needing to feed their addiction and when they do, it results in lacking the ability to function physically. They no longer think straight, what they once did gracefully they now do thoughtlessly. It changes people from being rational thinkers to being in a reckless mindset that the addiction has created.

Innocent people were torn away from their families because of their addictions. Priorities are inappropriately rearranged and it results in families turning their backs on each other. All sense of normal can be lost and when they get too far gone all sense of rescue from their situation is lost as well.

‘The Secret War’ at Laos was filled with tragic losses. The people that entered the war spent many years afterwards trying to recover. Every day even after they were discharged from recovery; they still battled what they struggled with throughout the war. Every day they are reminded of the trauma they experienced. Some of the strongest soldiers have come from the Secret Battle of Laos, Some are still fighting to this day, despite the fact that the war ended 45 years ago.