Coming Home

It's been a long time.  Six years, nine months, and four days.  I've marched through jungles and deserts, I met the enemy in forests and towns.  Rain swirled with fire, dust blew with ash.  I forgot what life was before.  I tried to remember sunny days by the coast, the sun, the sand the waves, but all I could see when I closed my eyes was the baking stretches of desert and the crash of shells and mortars.  I tried to imagine my family - my children, what would they look like now?  I couldn't conjure it - they are still babies in my mind.
But now they tell us that the war is over.  We no longer have to fight - we can go home.  They loaded us onto ships and we spent long weeks on the ocean.  Every unfamiliar bang or creak had us panicking and reaching for our rifles - but no, we no longer needed them.  Finally we were free once more.  We spoke of our dreams.  Friends I had known for half a decade spoke of farming and gardens, flowers and walks in the country with such life and enthusiasm... we spoke of a paradise.  No war, no fear, no death, just families laughing, roses at the door, bread on the table.
But it seems the war didn't just happen overseas.
My family are tired-eyed and fearful.  My children hide from me - the stranger that has come home.  They live in canvas now, and their rations are worse than what we were fed on the march.  The townsfolk have hollow eyes and thin faces.  There is no laughter.  We take a walk through the old village, up the lane where we would walk holding hands and picking blackberries in the sun.
I stand before my home, an empty shell of blackened brick and shattered glass.