THE MASTER OF WAR

I wonder from what trivial upsets are bloody wars declared and fought?

Now hear me, you people! Can you hear me? Are you anywhere near? I couldn’t see you properly even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to because you may not be aware of this but I’m dead and bloody jealous of anyone who isn’t.

Not that I wish to be offensive. Understand?

Unless it was you that started the ball rolling and sent my to this Stygian place. You down there in your fancy leather seat sitting at your oh so impressive desk: I’m talking to you. You are the master of war I’m talking to.

There was almost peace everywhere on the planet and if it was you who decided to start a pointless war against a people who didn’t know you were an enemy, then I blame you. If you’re not the bloke and I’ve got it wrong then I’m sorry and don’t really want to offend you.

But what had those you call your enemy really done to upset you? True, those of them who are of a religious nature might worship a different god or have different beliefs of a more secular nature than yours, but so what? If someone is different to you it doesn’t make either of you right or wrong. You’re just different, that’s all, and it’s that pig-headed belief that your difference is the right one that meant that I’m here in this blasted corner of nowhere in the basket next to the toilet door, and as dead as a very dead thing. Now don’t look! You won’t see me!

I’m not saying that you killed me but I am sure you caused me to be killed. Does that hat suit your political head?

But pause! Stop. You don’t know who I am, do you? So how can you take what I say on board if I’m just an anonymous voice out of the darkness of your war, and please don’t flush the toilet without warning me…

If it’s any help I’m Robert Denvers, M.B, ChB. And I was killed last night while I was at work in my operating theatre trying to divest a woman from a nasty tumour. But there are so many of us in the blasted place with so many injured and dying that there might even be another Robert Denvers, maybe dying or even dead. I know it’s not a common name and it’s quite possible that I’m the only Robert Denvers here, so find me if you can on your lists of the dead or on their way to being dead as you slowly and cruelly lose this war.

Let me tell you something. I spent a good half hour with one of your sons not so long ago and he told me how pig sick he is of you and your egotistical conviction that you’re quite right to consign one or two hundred thousand young men to fight a useless war for you. He told me that he wasn’t meant to be here, that you had prepared a bunker deep in the ground for your own family to hide from the bullets and bombs should any chance to come your way, but he escaped. He didn’t think it was fair if he was mollycoddled in safety whilst his best friend, a lad called Nigel, was obliged by law to take up arms and die.

He said his best friend was now dead, as dead as he was, and he didn’t think he could survive in life without him because they loved each other so intensely they might as well have been a single person, you know, two halves of the one. So dead, they can be together.

Now get you back to your seat and don’t you dared nip in and flush that toilet!

You see, your son joined your army under a false name because he couldn’t stand the idea of his lover Nigel getting hurt, and I know you’re probably upset because your son’s lover was another young lad, you’ve always had the reputation of being a bit, what’s the word? Ah, yes, homophobic. But love’s a strange concoction of emotions and none of us can truly control who we find so addictive to us that we’d call it love.

So that’s your son dealt with. Dead as I am but in no condition to be buried in one piece or even half a dozen pieces. Best to let his remains rot in the fields where he fell, that’s my advice, and I’m a doctor. I know you loved him, after all, fathers almost always love their sons, but ask yourself who started the damned war so if you need to blame anyone that’ll tell you who.

My advice is keep your family hidden and in a deep bunker, though I’m sorry your wife won’t be joining you and I guess you might have loved her. Let the othesr go really deep where there’s a chance they might be safe: there’s talk of the conflict escalating and becoming nuclear. I heard that somewhere. Ah, I remember, from your own lips when you broadcast that fiery speech on the television.

Now what are you doing? Back to the toilet and taking your trousers down? Sitting on the lavatory seat? You have been warned haven’t you? About flushing the toilet? Because that’s one thing I really wouldn’t do if I were you. You see, in my afterlife placement there was only one hidey hole for my spirit to go and that’s in this basket, but that was about it. Other places were less salubrious and someone very special to you is in that toilet What’s that? You’ve got to go? Then take a tip from me and find another seat to sit on and another toilet before you find yourself having to flush this loo…

Ah, I see you’ve taken my advice. I hope that one’s comfortable enough for you. After all, those who send half the young males in their country to die in a war that should never be really ought to be comfortable when they’re emptying their bowels.

But if you want to have a last brief word with your deceased son he’s in the last urinal, the one at the end, sitting, I think on a rather soggy cigarette end that someone’s thrown down there. I know you probably think it’s a disgrace, some young t**d daring to despoil your world by flicking cigarette ends into the urinal, but, you know, it’s not as bad as being blasted to kingdom come in a war. But he’s there all right, holding spectral hands with Nigel. Pity you can’t see him but he’s in the spirit world now and he told me quite plainly that he doesn’t want anything to do with you, not even from his fragrant seat in the urinal.

In fact he rather wishes you were dead too then maybe someone with less ego and more common sense would put a final end to this war. You see, I don’t know how many thousands of lives you’ve wasted, mine included, but at the tiny cost of your own life the whole tragic fiasco would be brought to an end.

What’s that? Who do I think I am talking to? A democratically elected leader like yourself, how dared I speak to you in this way?

I’d better tell you, then.

I’m Robert Denvers, M.B, ChB., and I’m the surgeon who was in the middle of operating on your good lady wife when a bullet or three came my way, shattering a window as they came. A few hit her, too, and to her utter embarrassment she’s sitting on a deep brown lump in the toilet on which you so nearly perched.

So don’t flush that toilet when you’ve done. It might dislodge her precious spirit and send her to the sewer, and none of this is her fault. Unless we’re at war because she was too tired when you both went to bed the other night, and turned over and faced the other way when you were feeling passionate and ready.

© Peter Rogerson 28.04.23

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