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| An English soldier surveys no-man land for signs of enemy activity. |
I have been away for nearly a month now but I have been busy. It seems my will to comment on current affairs has pretty much died, or at least it is asleep. for now.
My artistic instincts however are undulled and during this time I have composed several poems, wrote a short story or two and even begun a novel. Following is a brief piece of fiction I wrote several weeks ago, it is technically classed as flash fiction, and it recounts not more than a minute in the life of an English soldier of the Great War on the receiving end of an enemy assault:
The
Mad Minute
By SerpentSlayer
For a minute I sat
crouched in the shallow trench, my ears still ringing from the blast.
I went as if to grab another clip for my rifle's magazine but I found
that my hand shook too violently to articulate well enough to do it.
I was done for, I knew my rifle was empty, I knew my bayonet lay bent
and broken on whichever part of the floor, wherever the blast had
threw it and worst of all, I knew that the rest of my section had
fallen, every man other than myself had been taken by Jerry's
artillery shells.
As the roaring and
shouting of battle-cries became louder, I found that every breath
seemed longer and longer and every shout of 'Gott Mit Uns!' became
ever more drawling and slow. As the approaching wall of sound stretched
and grew louder, my mind seemed to become clearer and I was at ease
in the hell that I found myself in. I took my last clip of five
rounds from the pouch on my right hip and thumbed the .303 rounds
into my Enfield rifle, I discarded the strip of metal that allowed
them to be loaded swiftly and pushed the bolt forward. As I did this
it dawned on me that
crouching in an
inconspicuous position as I was, I would not be seen. German soldiers
began to reach the trench. I could see the shadow of the tips of their
pointy helmets to my left.
When the first
Pickelhaube wearing head turned towards me, the hollowpoint round
that blasted his skull into shard came completely unawares, the
heroic triumph was still written in his face as his body flopped to
the ground. Two more of the Hun made it into the trench, leaping with
their bayonets fixed and their eyes filled with fury, both turning
towards me with a vengeful look as they took in the sight of their
fallen comrade. My next shot, with my rifle cocked as the two sets
of Prussian feet touched the ground, rang out loudly, this second
.303 round claimed one of the Hun, with a blow to the chest, he was
barely a boy, his face bare and his eyes wide as he fell clutching
the hole where his heart used to be.
The other German, an
older man with a thick red beard charged at me, angry with grief and
a tear in his eyes. As if by instinct I had lifted my rifle by the
upturning of my left hand and held it as a club in anticipation of
the bayonet thrust that was finding it's way towards me. I
sidestepped and hammered the butt of my rifle on to the benthandled
bayonet the Hun had fixed to his rifle and almost as if one action I
sent the butt of my Enfield right into his cheekbone, shattering
blood, bone and meat into the air. As the bearded German fell, I
noticed more Germans that had filed behind him into the trench. My rifle
still in mid swing as it was, was useless to me and I
was helpless to stop the shot that filled my lungs with blood. The
world was brought back into focus, the flat mud puddle of Belgium,
the sounds of explosions and battle-cries, the German and English
corpses strewn around the trench, I screamed inside as I fell on to
the earth. And yet another white man fell in the mud of Flanders,
joining the thousands who had fell before, another faceless tragedy.
-Dedicated to all the European soldiers who fought in the Great War 1914 to 1918-
