I’ve grown used to the sound of the bombs. Each one echoes in my mind with a constant thrumming.
I scratch my chest, and the mud caked on my skin gets under my short nails. The lice are quickly growing in numbers; the itches are becoming more unrelenting and an even greater cause for misery.
Jimmy moans next to me. I turn to him. His eyes, normally so bright and merry, are dull and almost completely shut.
“What is it?” I ask. A bomb goes off quite close to us.
My friend looks at me. His gaze is so dead I have to resist flinching. “We’re never going to see home again, are we?” His voice is alarmingly flat, and despair makes the skin of his face sag. I pray he doesn’t have shell shock.
I shift my gun to my other side. “I don’t know, Jim,” I answer softly, scratching some more. I wonder how Jimmy isn’t scratching—he has lice just the same as all the rest of us. But his arms lay limply at his sides.
Night is falling fast, and neither of us says anymore. Men around us murmur quietly to each other, but we take no part in the whispered conversations. I study Jimmy worriedly in the fading light. He’s begun to drift off in a troubled sleep. I know it is troubled by his furrowed brow and restless shifting.
The sky is now dark, lit up once and a while with the orange glow of exploding bombs. If I tilt my head back and forget enough, I can pretend I’m back home just watching fireworks with Anna.
Jimmy cries out in his sleep, and my attention turns back to him. I can barely make out the features of his face. But I do note a pair of glowing red eyes next to his closed ones. A rat is perched on his shoulder. I sit up tiredly and flip my hand at it to scare it off. The creature scampers away, and I sink back against the trench wall again wearily. I do not allow myself to drift off as Jimmy has. Someone needs to watch for the rats—there's no doubt in my mind that they will return.
“Tom?” Jimmy’s voice comes out of the obscuring shadows.
“What?”
“Did you ever think it would be like this?”
At first I don’t reply. I see myself—was it really only six months ago? —grinning as I hugged my young wife and boarded the train that would take me here. I’d been filled with excitement. I’d wanted to go… I’d wanted to serve my country.
“It’s war, Jimmy,” I finally say as an answer. Wishful thinking or dwelling on regrets will not help us here. Jimmy is silent. He hangs his head until his chin is touching his chest.
Thunder rumbles above us. I swallow a sigh. “Better switch socks, Jim,” I say. “Looks like it’s going to rain again.”
Jimmy doesn’t move. I take my second pair of socks—still damp—from around my neck. My neck instantly feels the chill of the air around us. I swiftly take off my boots, take off the soaking pair on my trembling feet, and hurriedly cover them again with the slightly less-wet pair. The drenched pair now goes around my neck. Jimmy still hasn’t moved.
“Jimmy,” I say, sharply now, “switch your socks. Now. You won’t be doing any of us any good if you get trench foot.”
He remains as he is. I growl in my throat, hating to have to be the stronger one. I would love to give up as he has. Weakness is tiring, but strength is exahausting.
I stand to my feet and kneel before him. With jerky movements I take the pair from his neck and switch them with the ones on his feet. I roughly shove the wet pair around his neck.
He doesn’t say a word, or even look at me. I settle back against the wall once more. A moment later I feel a raindrop splash on my cheek. I look up at the sky, and more drops begin to fall. Men grumble and come awake. Some are already shuffling onto the duckboards. The mud will soon be too thick to stand anywhere else.
“Jim, come on,” I order, also getting on the duckboard. This time he obeys and comes to stand beside me. Part of me is glad for the rain. It will kill of most off the lice.
“We should be having orders soon,” someone next to me says. My stomach clenches, as I’m sure many other stomachs are. New orders. It is something that is always dreaded. New orders could mean three things.
Men are needed for the tunnel. Men are required to repress a German attack. Or, the one most dreaded… men are going over the top.
Death are an almost certain result of the first two. It is an absolute certainty of the third.
The rain is coming down in torrents. Not the light drizzle we are all accustomed to. Jimmy shivers next to me, and I notice how his uniform hangs on his slight frame. I force myself to turn away. There’s nothing I can do, and I’m probably in just the same shape.
“How many do you think the front has lost?” Another man asks his comrade. I strain to hear his answer.
“Thousands.”
All the men fall silent again. We have nothing more to say. Nothing more to do, but wait. Time passes slowly. The rain does not stop. I watch as the mud oozes over the duckboard and our boots.
Jimmy’s trembling increases. He says something to me through chattering teeth, but the rain fills my ears and I cannot hear him. But I can hear the soldiers around me, speaking to each other again in urgent tones.
“The Sergeant is coming…”
“He’s coming.”
“New orders. New orders, men!”
The soldiers are shifting, growing more agitated as our leader comes to us. I do not see him. But eventually I hear him. And I also hear the words that I did not want to hear.
“We’re going over the top, men!” He bellows. “Alpha Six! Going over the top!”
Jimmy moans again, and I clench my gun so tightly in my hand that my mud-smeared knuckles go white. I scratch some more, hurting myself in my fight for control.
Our squad follows the Sergeant in a single-file line through the trenches. Men from different squads step into the mud to allow us to pass. Some stare as if we’re condemned.
Then I remember that we are.
Jimmy is sniffling. I scowl when a man shoves my friend from behind. Jimmy falls against me but hastily straightens himself. “Toughen up, weakling!” The burly soldier snaps at him. “This is war, not some funeral we have time to cry at!”
I whip my head around to glare at him. He glares back. But then I am forced to move on. Jimmy is trying to hold in his tears. I don’t turn—the line is moving quickly—but I say, “Let it out, Jimmy. This will be the last chance both of us has to cry.”
I can’t see his face, and he doesn’t make a reply. We keep moving towards the front. A grim silence hovers in the trenches. We are not unaware that we march to our deaths.
My mind is consumed with picturing Anna. Her red curls… those sweet lips…
We’ve reached the front. Soldiers press their backs along the wall to give us room. I take a deep breath, trying to prepare myself.
“Move! Move, now!” Our Sergeant shouts, and we, as a group, scramble up over the trench wall and up into the open. I barely have time to notice that Jimmy is still beside me.
“Drop!”
Immediately we comply—there are gunshots coming at us with such numbers and swiftness that it’s staggering. I see a few men fall to the ground, already dead.
We inch forward as quickly as we can. Bullets whiz past alarmingly close to my head. Men are being shot and bombed and dying off as easily and swiftly as swatted flies. Not men to the Germans—just targets. As they are to us.
Our numbers dwindle. No Man’s Land is littered with bodies. Some are days old, and as I crawl pass them I gag at their stench.
A soldier next to Jimmy cries out as his leg is shot. He clutches at it, and the pause is just enough time for him to be shot in the head.
Jimmy is frantic beside me. His eyes are wide and there is blood splattered across his face. He is desperate for cover, and he picks up his pace up to find it. But we both know there is none.
Ahead of me I watch as my Sergeant is shot down. He makes a sound in his throat, and slumps. I grit my teeth and force myself to keep moving.
There will be none of us left when we reach the barbed wire. We have no orders and there will be no new ones, such as turning back. Our Sergeant is already dead. But our old orders are clear. Turning back on our own would be desertion. I am no coward.
Jimmy screams, and I jerk my head to look at him. He’s stopped crawling, and is sprawled out onto the hard ground. I feel my lip tremble as I stare into my dead friend’s eyes. The front of his uniform is darkening with the steady stream of blood coming out of his chest. A wound caused by a German bullet.
I’ve stayed still for too long. A bullet pierces my side, and I clench my teeth to keep from crying out.
Leaving Jimmy behind, I determinedly start crawling again, trying to ignore the pain. I am bent on killing at least one German before I follow my friend to Heaven or Hell.
I’m one of the last of my squad still living. Bullets come at me from seemingly all sides. I lift my gun; I won’t be able to get any closer. I can see, at a distance, two Germans standing outside of their trenches. I manage to raise my own gun at one of them, though my side burns and hinders me. I close an eye in an attempt to aim.
Another bullet shoots through my hand, and this time I shout in pain. I pull the trigger just as another pain sears through my chest.
I lay back and stare up at the sky. I feel my life draining from me. The bombing overhead does not stop to recognize the death of a simple foot soldier.
They look so much like fireworks… I smile dreamily and reach out my injured hand to try and touch one. So very beautiful, in a dangerous and deadly way. I can almost pretend it’s the Fourth of July, and we’ve won the war. My name is listed among those who fought honorably and died for our country. Anna will hear it, and she’ll smile with pride through her tears. There will be fireworks, just like the ones exploding over me.
Fireworks for the war…
I can really imagine this because my brother has fought in the war thank goodness he's still alive but still your work made me see it so beautifully and clearly. I love this piece and look forward to seeing more from you. Your awesome!
But that was your point and you did well with it.
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