Opening Eyes

[Desert Stallion]

Written as a contest challenge, this story's sentences begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet, 25 out of 26. Rommel at El Alamein. Enjoy...and hold on while I get this posted.

[Desert Stallion]

A horrible decision lies before me todoy, and there is no time to ponder it. Between two paths I stand, hardly any time to consider what I must do. Choose to obey my fuhrer and send my men to an unfair end? Death and broken oath might be my own rewards if I should refuse him. Ever I wrack my mind, seeking a way to tread both trails. Forward and back I pace. Grateful am I to have this officer walking beside me, a man to talk to in this dark hour. Havoc has ever followed my army, and this is an order for such great, mindless destruction, I cannot believe it.

I mutter in amazement, "He cannot have sent this;" then, "he is mad." Judging him so may seem harsh, but it cannot be anyone but him. Keitel, Kesselring-those fellows would not dare to ask him to deliver such an order. Lately I have sensed the strangeness in him, the wild mood swings; he is unstable. My choice to follow a mad man would be folly. No, I cannot send my men to certain thankless death. Oh, what punishment could be worse than that? "Pull them back," I tell my officers eventually, "and we'll talk about it later." Quickly they obey my orders, so unlike myself.

Rational sense tells me I have done the right thing, yet...Sorrow comes as well; after all, I have broken the soldier's code of obediance, and my own word. Torture of a mental kind has descended upon me, and I cannot find find rest. Uneasy, I wonder what this decision will mean in the furture. Vexed, I stand and watch my men stream away from the enemy, defeated. Why, I wonder, and then realize, the enemy has done no more to defeat us than our own leaders. Yes, he is mad, and he is destroying my country. Zzzz...my restless sleep tonight is haunted by troubled dreams; what has happened to my world?