Member-only story
Flash Fiction
Battle Front: A Short Fictional Tale
Sometimes things go bad even after you return home from war
The winds picked up outside of the barracks at Camp Shelby.
Captain Roger Greenwood, a Tennessee Army Guardsman, reclined on a worn leather sofa in the dayroom of a dilapidated Vietnam Era barrack.
His soldiers sat around; some on the phone with their girlfriends or mothers.
Most of the soldiers played games on their smartphones. They’d returned from a deployment assignment in Afghanistan and were happy to be close to home.
Roger looked up for a moment as the wind whistled through the eaves of the barracks. For a few minutes he dreamed he was back home in Tennessee; the East Tennessee mountains – at his daughter’s school…
***
As he dozed, he found himself glaring through the dirty truck window of his 2001 Chevy Silverado trying to recognize the flags in front of his daughter’s school. His truck radio blared something about a tornado warning. But he was in a hurry and ignored what he called “unnecessary panic warnings.”
Man, I hope the guys are all OK in this mess, he thought.
