Lotus Eater

Many weeks later Sergeant Ulysses awakened from his slumber, he saw his hands wrapped in cumbersome bandages, his face he could no longer feel. His hair was shorn from his crown, he no longer wished for glory or fame. His only thoughts were to return to his home in the hills of North Carolina again.

An officer dressed in a uniform of gold, red, and blue, came to his bed. He placed a medal of glistening silver on his blanket,
“Sergeant Ulysses, for action that was gallant, your countrymen wish to present you with this token, and from this war you will depart. You will return home, a hero with courage unmatched.”

Ulysses, the man, did not speak. He was only the one who did not perish, the brave heroes fell in the woods, and Ulysses the man was weak. He continued his stay in the bed, his body wrapped in morphine’s care, his will to leave almost sapped.

A letter from home was delivered to his side one afternoon.
“We are all waiting for you.” His wife wrote of love, children, crops, and home. Ulysses the man remembered why he strove. To live to see my family once more. I must leave France, this hospital, and this dread. He dressed himself and readied his pack. He received his papers, and his pass. Through the doors of the hospital he passed, limping away, he had found peace at last.