The Graves of the Ignoble
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Sunny Breeze stood at the wrought iron gates of a park. He swayed a bit and he had booze on his breath. No time like short hours past sunrise to begin imbibing heavily on a gorgeous holiday. He wore camo and bore a holster. He kept looking around constantly, holding his body stiffly, ears poised on end. Beside the pale unicorn stood an unarmed yellow earth pony.
“No time like holiday mornings to make oneself a mess, right, Haye?” The unicorn joked.
Haye responded, “I wouldn’t know, Sunny. You’re the one who insisted on coming here.”
Sunny shrugged, “What can I say? My friends are the type best handled drunk.”
“Our friends,” corrected Haye, ruffling his black leather jacket.
“Da, our friends.” Sunny’s inebriated bravado faltered for a second, his red eyes lapsing into pure weariness for a split second as he bowed his head. “How could I forget?”
The one in the leathers replied to his friend, “No idea. You know what today is, right, Sunny?”
“Of course, Haye,” the camouflaged one retorts with a huff. It’s about keep the memory of our lost brothers in arms.”
“And what do you think it means to do that?”
“It means that we remember who they were and what they gave to us in life. I don’t know, Bratan -- I was just a rotten merc; you were the soldier. I shared time with some of these ponies, but that doesn’t put me on even footing.”
“Because your experience only counts if you were official military, apparently.”
“Well, it is their day and we’re in their cemetery, after all,” Sunny smirked.
“Yeah. So, you wanna go through with this?”
“Of course, Haye.”
“Okay, my friend,” replied the yellow stallion as he scuffed the cobblestones absentmindedly with his hoof. Just promise me at the end you’ll tell me what it means to remember.”
“Heh, like I could forget; PTSD and all that. Let’s not forget to ask the odd visitor some things, too. Well, no point in waiting around anymore – davai.”
The comrades stepped through the open gates. Above them was spelled in the cold iron. “Canterlot Military Cemetary” and below it, split by the gate, were formed more words. On the left side it read, “We were nameless in life.” The right side read, “You know us in death.” Sunny went in on the left. Haye went in on the right.
Dead silence other than the sound of walking. The broad, green lawns and shady trees ought to be resounding with birdsong and the calls of wild animals, but they weren’t. The ground was broken by headstones, row upon rows of headstones organized precisely in formation. Every headstone had a full name inscribed on the top, then the dates of birth and death, then cutie mark, then conflict, then rank and unit, then service branch, then a mark indicating earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus, then a device indicating decorations, and at the bottom, like an afterthought, was a brief personal message. Between the ranks stretched white marble paths flushed clean and while as bleached bones. And between platoons of headstones went great walkways. And between these ribbons of marble were even greater promenades of stone. Haye lead Sunny through. His friend was already intoxicated, and by his brief expression, much less sound than even he knew. He, above all else, needed to grieve, but if he suffered anything so undignified as a breakdown, he would drown.
Sunny went along, subconsciously guided by Haye. He had absolute trust in his friend. After all, distrusting the last one to still stand for him would do him no favors.
Sunny remarked, “So many of these graves have flowers on them. And they’re fresh.”
“Yeah, I see.”
Sunny squinted closer. “Most of these guys aren’t exactly old. At least half of them are in their teens.”
“True.”
Sunny shook his head. “Some of these guys were younger than us when we started.”
“I know. More than a few blank flank colts here.”
“Don’t forget the mares.”
“Yeah. Kinda easy to forget them when they’re just a minority.” Haye nodded. “I see lots of pegasi.”
“Me too. Funny how a common burial ground still remembers to point out the little things that make its residents disparate.”
The pair continued walking. For a long time no sounds came besides the noises of their hooves clopping along the stone paths. Bang! Instantly, Sunny yanked his Makarov from its holster and wheeling around to face the threat, magicking down the safety as he engaged, rising to face his foe, not an infiltrator, not a combatant bristling with weapons, but… a freshly fallen nut. Haye looked at him with concern. “Dude, are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Just wasn’t expecting that – didn’t have my guard up.” Sunny Breeze smiled weakly, slipping the handgun back into its holster.“
“You haven’t been in the field for years.”
“I was there last night.”
A concerned look appeared on Haye Bailer’s face. “So you really aren’t getting better…” Sunny ignored this while setting off, rambling, “
Last night I dreamt of Mustangsi, prayed that I’d never gone, the marches long. Weapons alight in high desert. It all seems like yesterday, not far away. Bloody gorge Mustangsi, our weapons firing free, where forever some will be. Ogna otkryta. And then the mortars came and fell from on high, rip my ears and sear my mind. Koshmari navsegda.” Haye shook his head. He saw his friend’s head on a swivel.
As they went on, the pair soon saw a couple of a mare and a stallion. She hung near him. He kept going forwards, smiling pleasantly, hit eyes alternating between just the path ahead of him and the beauty nuzzling against him. He reciprocated with a wide grin, seemingly blind to his surroundings. Sunny and Haye pushed past them.
Haye interruped, “Oi, you two.” They stopped to look at him, caught completely off guard, blushing as they broke apart. “Do you know who Private Buddy Dacote was?”
“What? Who?” The bamboozled mare replied.
“Private Buddy Dacote, pegasus, killed 2’nd Mild West troubles.”
“No, sorry,” answered the stallion. “How’re we supposed to know that.”
Haye sighed, pointing as the grave. “Because it’s the Day of Remembrance and you’re standing about two feet from his grave.”
“Er, I don’t understand, sorry. What’s your point again, bro?” Sunny gave them a hard look. Haye groaned. The stallion read aloud, “You first die when you breathe your last. You die again when nobody remembers you. You die for the last time when your world loses all relevance.” He gave them a confused look. “That’s deep, but what’s the deal?”
Haye and Sunny left the couple there. The former strode harder with a frown. The latter had an expression of sad resignation.
Once they were some meters out of earshot, Haye said, “You’d think this place was just some part and today was just some holiday.”
“Eeyup,” Sunny agreed. “You think that Private Dacote is fully dead or just two thirds of the way?”
“I’d hope just two thirds.” They carried on for a long ways until they came upon another group. It was led by an older mare somewhere between her golden and twilight years, yet her mane was all grey apart from a few stubborn sparkles. She led a group of eight bright-eyed foals through the cemetary. Some had eyes locked on their elder while others had their attention elsewhere.
Sunny overheard a foal ask, “What’s conscription?” The stallion’s ears yet.
“Conscription is when you make everypony of a certain age join the army.”
“But what if I don’t want to go?”
“You don’t have a choice if you’re conscripted.”
“Do ponies still get conscripted?” The colt had a very obvious tremor to his voice.
The teacher replied, “Don’t worry, Equestria hasn’t used conscription is more than a hundred and fifty years and Princess Celestia has no plans to start it again in our age of peace.” She ended with that.
Passing around the front of the group, Sunny added, “Other countries still conscript. Griffiya takes all freegriffons and makes them spend a year in the army, but only the best get to stay. Zebricy conscripts everypony for two years if they don’t get out of it by going to college or something.”
The same colt asked, “What do they do if you don’t want to go?”
“Make you go anyway at gunpoint. I knew a lot of conscripts. Be grateful you won’t have to suffer what they did. Remember: Conscription is all about raising lots of troops quickly, and a million is a statistic. Over there, most of the dead in cemeteries like this are conscripts not much older than you. Given the era of these graves, most’ve them are probably conscripts.” Sunny trotted off.
“Nice lesson,” Haye snarked.
“Just doing my part to educate the youth of Equestria.”
“And give them nightmares, too.”
“Naturally.”
They went on ahead. The pair presently drew up to a proud monument carved in speckled granite and crowned with gleaming bronze. And at its very peak flickered a flame. It was guarded on all sides by ponies in ceremonial dress uniforms, holding long spears like living statues. The Tomb of the Unknowns. Sunny sealed his lips at such a sacred place. It could be anyone in there – even him if he’d died unidentified. He swallowed, realizing that this would be the place where his heart would be touched. He almost dare not read the inscription.
Haye tapped his shoulder. “Sunny, you sure you wanna look at this?”
Sunny answered back stonily, “It’s for all of us; I have to.”
Sunny Breeze did his best to compose himself as he began to read silently.
“No one owns this tomb,
Nor may one claim it.
This is for all our heroes gone into the darkness, unreturned.
This monument stands for those forgotten in the fog of war,
For those unknown in life and death,
For those whose stories would never be told,
For those whose families would never know their fate,
For those whose bodies their brothers in arms could not identify,
For those whose deaths would be unmourned.
This tomb is for them.
Here in death lay unnumbered lost souls taken in blood before their time,
Slain in mountains and valleys, fields and caves, cities and forests, deserts and seas,
In pain and terror, far from home they breathed their last as darkness shrouded their eyes.
Here lay the souls who displayed the greatest courage to the end not for themselves,
But for others.
Here lay brave souls who welcomed death for the sake of future unborn millions.
Every one of them, every wasted life, every lost dream, every promise broken, rests here a million years.
Here, they are all joined in death.
Here, there is no difference between the pegasi and the ponies and the unicorns.
There is no difference between the marked and the blank.
If you can read this, know their sacrifice was not in vain.
They leave us a mighty burden.
Now it is your turn to shoulder it into the dark.
Here lies a fallen soldier, known to none,
Lost forever to the light, his ultimate sacrifice forever.
May we never forget.”
Sunny reached the end of the inscription, tears leaking from his eyes. He saluted, choking back a sob. Then he continued on his way. Near the gate he saw a stallion in military uniform leaking tears as he lay flowers at the headstone of a comrade. Sunny offered a limbs around his shoulders and they walked out together, crying freely on a glorious day for grief.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading!
Dedicated for Memorial Day 2015. Sorry for being a little late.
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