Brave. Courageous. Too stupid to know any better. He knew better. My great-grandfather, born a Canadian citizen in 1896, fled the country upon being conscripted for the Great War. Back in a foreign homeland, everything - the bugs, the heat, the toothless farmers, the rancid rice wine - exasperated his better sensibilities. It was 1917 and a twenty three year old Robert, stuck in a tiny village that modernity forgot, harboured a single thought, a singular dream - a nurse named Betty Ng.
Betty looked at the distant explosions, the vertiginous front was tantalizingly close. Death was now commonplace. She could not recall normalcy. Another group of causalities arrived at the tent, she finished her smoke and returned to work - forgetting for a second the hellish reality unfolding in the distance.
Robert sat in the middle of the Lychee Orchard and stared at the tallest tree. An unripened lychee nut teetered and plummeted from its branch. It bounced off the earth and rolled to rest at his feet. He picked up the nut and peeled it. He gazed at its glistening flesh for a while, lost, and awash in wonderment. A soothing southerly breeze caused the branches to rustle, knocking ajar more lychees. He wondered if the tree was already dead.
