Lt D R Miller

After stumbling through the darkness, I spied something, a light, the first I had seen in hours. It seemed to light a pearl white door. Slowly I walked up to the door, my legs were on fire. I had walked for what seemed liked years. I opened the old, rusty door. It creaked as it slowly and light flooded in. It seemed to light the entire corridor, half rotted beams of oak crisscrossed across the roof. I was glad to get out of that place as it could collapse at any moment. A ladder, old and worn, lead skyward. I climbed up ward to a trap door. It opened with a crash and plumes of dust exploded like fireworks around the room. Old bunks surrounded me and I breathed in musty air. Dust-laden bedclothes draped over edges of beds and ancient tin utensils were set for five. What had happened here? A strange, eerie feeling came over me. I looked around some more; the dust became unsettled as I walked across the old wooden floor.  I approached the bunks on the furthest side of the cabin and I started to feel around under the lumpy, linen mattresses. I checked every bed working clockwise around the cabin.  I checked all but one, the one in the corner by the door. Then something caught my eye. A glint, like some one was shining a mirror at me.  I traced it across the room, squinting in the muffled right.  It was a small, silver canteen, some tarnished but some still revealing the polish of its former days. Embedded in the lower left corner was a copper bullet, above it, it read, “To protect and to serve”.  As I turned it over in my trembling hands, I thought of the many souls that had occupied this room. I glanced down . . . once, twice . . . was I reading it right?  The initials said “Lt  D R Miller”.  Could this be the flask my grandfather had told me about?  Is it the one he drank out of?  Was it the one which saved his life?  I had so many questions.  I tucked the flask into the side pocket of my cargo pants and turned to head back to the trap door.  Could this be real?  I coughed as I emerged, covered in dust and returned, weary and unsteady on my feet, to the bus where my class were waiting.

Iain