Story: Dance In The Graveyard - Season 1 Episode 4

8 years ago

Story: Dance In The Graveyard - Season 1 Episode 4

The General, The Major and I After those words of encouragement from the General, I was escorted half way back to the camp by the personal guards of the General. It was convincing that they were military men but they don’t belong to the Nigerian Army. When I got back to the camp, I was quite surprised that no one knew about my movement, everyone was fast asleep. As I was about sleeping, my phone alerted me of a new message. The message was quite surprising and scary.

The message reads: “hello young soldier, I know about your movement. Be very careful. Don’t go further”.

I knew immediately that it was the Major. The hatred for this man as at this time was really and truly established. I was so determined to take him out. “Musa, just cross my way and let my bullet do the talking” I thought to myself. Terrorist attacks which was the order of the day at that present moment manifested again, terrorists were along our borders. But this time, Major Musa Yusuf himself led us out.

It was surprising to myself and Lanre. To be sincere, Major Musa is good at war combat. All his commands were straight and precise. We killed over a hundred that day without using any of our explosives. Unfortunately, one of us was injured by the action of a bullet from the enemies. He was quickly taken to a hospital at the capital for proper treatments. He survived. That night, we celebrated like we use to. That night was the first night Major Musa is going to celebrate with us. We could see the joy all over his face.

“Could he want to disguise as if he not the one who sent me the text? Musa you can’t deceive me.” I thought to myself. In fact, he gave we the new recruits gifts. Shirts, trousers, money to my colleagues. But when it came to my turn, what he gave to me was a surprise. A pen and a nokia torch light phone, in hypocrisy I gave him a salute. On the pen I could observe that there was an inscription on it. And it says; “make this pen your best friend”. I immediately looked into his eyes and he gave me a nod. The major was trying to pass me a message. After everything that night, we went to sleep. I switched on the phone the Major gave me while on my mat, something interesting came up again.

The welcome message was; “I will resign soon. My reasons? You will know one day”.Its now confusing, the Major is no more the bad guy, then who is? I slept that night in confusion. The next morning, we had our drill. This time, it was fun-filled as the major himself led us and he was telling us the story of himself as a young soldier.

A quite interesting story but after the story, he broke many of my colleagues heart by announcing his personal retirement. Everyone was shocked but not me, I was only eager to know why he wants to resign and not retire in the future. “But listen, I’m going to come back, not as a Major but something else” that was his last words to us. We had a 21 gun-shoot salute in his honour.

My situation become the person who wants to see with a dark light, I was confused. Days after, another commandant was sent to us his name was Major-General Demola Johnson. He was quite gentle and cool. His own drills were too stressful. But with time, we adapted.
On my mat one day, I received a call;
[ads4]
Me:” hello”
Unknown: “hello soldier”
Me: “who is this?”
Unknown: “you don’t just want to know me”.
Me: “so what do you want”
Unknown: “we know your tactics and plans. We also know that you are
intelligent. We offer you an open arms to join us. Do you think you
can conquer us? Ahahahaha I laugh. We only send our weak ones to you,
so that we can know your abilities. You guys are quite good but we are
better. Now here are your options, join us or don’t plan with them,
else….”
*ends the call*

I was beginning to hate myself as a soldier. I was confused. I couldn’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t understand. That was the beginning of the dance. The biggest of all the attacks came on a friday evening.

About five states were attacked at the same time, so there was no room for any troop helping another. All man for himself. During this attack, Major Demola and some other colleagues were killed. Lanre fled but to a place I don’t know.

My fear came back immediately. But I took courage to drive an armoured tank to attack the enemies, Col. Yaro joined me. I didn’t stop firing until all of them fled and I could see no one. Although I conquered but wasn’t happy.

Going straight to my tent I received a call.