He sat resting his back against the wall, the small,strange red flower clutched in his hand.
Battle weary,fatigue and pain etched themselves in the lines upon his face, a face that was barely twenty but looked fifty.

He gazed at the red flower, he had not meant to pull it from the ground. When he had seen its beauty shining against the backdrop of blackened buildings and brown muddy fields he had limped, staggered and finally crawled to reach the source of that beauty.

He looked across the route he had come, these precious fields, each one paid for with blood, pain and death. He tried to remember the person he was when first he had set foot in this foreign land, bright, willing and naive. His uniform fresh and new, his buttons and boots gleaming.

Had he really believed that his presence would cause the enemy to flounder and fall? A small wry laugh escaped his lips as he recalled his disgust at the bedraggled appearence of those already there on the front line, how his romantic notions of warfare had been eradicated by the vile stench of urine, vomit and blood in the mud filled trenches where sleep was but a distant dream.

He had cried many times those first days, as his friends and comrades fell at his side, great wrenching sobs of pain and grief. He no longer cried, his friends all gone and only comrades left that he ate and fought with, they fell you stepped over them lest you fall too.

Each week the promise of home is spoken, soon boys, soon!

His gaze shifted to the left, his imagery disturbed by something on the edge of his vision, at first all he could see was the ruined rooms of the farmhouse whose wall he sat against, oh, no there it was! The warm glow of the fire in the kitchen Hearth, there on the rough flagged floor the rugs that Mama had made, sitting in the chair at night painstakingly weaving the bright colours together to make the place look cheerful and welcoming.
The tall china dresser Papa had fashioned from blocks of wood, after the accident that had left him unable to walk without the aid of a stick, filled with delicate china bought from the proceeds of the bits of furniture he fashioned for others. His sisters legacy for when she was grown and married, only she had never reached womanhood, taken from them days before her fourteenth birthday, he missed her still.

The table laid for the evening meal, silver cutlery gleaming on the crisp white cloth, three places set. As he struggled to think, three places, the couple stood by the glowing fire turned, looking at the doorway, at him, smiling and proud as they were the day he left.
And now he knew he was going home.

A long deep sigh issued from his lips and a single tear traced a path down his cheek, trembled and dropped on the blood red flower as it tumbled to the ground.