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herr_bookman) wrote2014-10-03 11:56 pm
herr_bookman) wrote2014-10-03 11:56 pm
WWI - Neuve Chapelle
I was sent to the Artois region in France at the age of nineteen, and with Dylan was led into the trenches. They were eight feet deep and four to six feet wide--and I heard some of them were deep enough to sport wallpaper--but they were unable to withstand a howitzer bombardment.
Still, I had to admit they were ingeniously constructed. I knew from my reading in the bar that by the end of 1914, there were 475 miles of trenches stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier, running through Belgium. Parapets--the front wall nearest to the enemy--were often shored up with wood and covered with sandbags. The parados, the back walls, were constructed in a similar manner. The "floor" was a drainage ditch called a sump, covered by duck boards.
Our enemies--the French and Brits--shot at us from trenches only a hundred yards away. In between us was a landscape chewed up and shelled to hell called No Man's Land. It was covered in barbed wire, and I'd already seen more than one person tangled in it and shot. Snipers dotted No Man's Land, hiding in fake trees.
Trench life was disgusting, and no more so than on the front lines. With so many of us living in a claustrophobic, half-underground space--and getting shelled and shot at--tempers rode high. Food, empty tins, and other trash littered the grounds, and no one could ignore the presence of the latrines--boxes over deep holes in the ground. We couldn't wash for weeks at a time, and everyone had lice. There were also the occasional corpses--which attracted rats--waiting to be buried under black crosses. The smell of people putrefying was horrendous.
Crown Prince Rupprecht commanded the troops, demanding that we hold Vimy Ridge at Neuve Chapelle. It was there that I experienced my first shell, in the middle of the night. Rae's Seeing Things Clearly ward, which I likened to precognition, kicked in, and I picked up the whine of an incoming mortar before anyone else. I barked, "shell!" before I realized I'd opened my mouth.
I ran through the zig zag pattern of the trench, dragging Oberleutnant Nadel with me. I dropped to my knees on the duck boards as I felt the bomb burst five yards away. The sound was terrifying, a great thunderclap of a sound, and the mud flew high into the air around us.
Nadel raised his head from the ground and mouthed something. I couldn't hear anything but my ears ringing. Then he gave me a thumbs up. I realized that we both would have died from the bomb, and trembled at the thought.
At dawn, we'd all line up with our bayonets fixed on the other trenches in something called the stand-to, to guard against a raid. We'd discharge our weapons in an attack named, "the morning hate." Apparently it was to clear out people who may have tried to ambush us during the night. Charging the trenches was suicide in the daylight, so my COs--one of whom was always on duty, making us comfortable--sent out patrols of four or five men at night to crawl across No Man's Land and eavesdrop on the enemy, or repair the barbed wire fences.
After the morning hate, we cleaned our rifles and presented them for inspection. And then we all had breakfast, which was sort of a truce between the Central and Allied troops. We complained loudly and cheerfully about the terrible food--and, most importantly, how little there was.
Nadel assigned me muckwork today--I had to drain the trench and repair the duckboards. It was wet work, as we'd been rained on for the past two days, but better than repairing the cesspools or sandbags. Strauss had first watch for the two hour stretch at the fire-step today, which was good. I trusted Strauss. Deserting the fire-step while on watch was punishable by firing squad. He wasn't stupid enough to desert.
During my watch, I spotted--of all things--an orange-striped tabby easily squeezing through the barbed wire of No Man's Land. "What is that cat doing there?" I asked Strauss, who was resting in the bottom of the trench beside me.
"Oh, one of the older guys told me about him. That's Kapitän Kuschel," Strauss said, whittling. He was always whittling something, and some of his carvings were really quite good. "He's a real beast, but he eats the rats and whatever people feed him."
I glanced at the cat through my crosshairs, and noticed that it was approaching us. He reminded me of my kitten, Etude, and how he'd curl up on my shoulders while I was working. A wave of homesickness threatened to strangle me, and I choked it down to focus on the orange tabby. "I bet the Brits have a different name for him."
"Probably something dumber than ours," Strauss said, grinning.
A few more watches later, it was dusk again, and time for our supplies to be replenished amidst the usual attacks. We had another stand-to. Mortars broke the earth, crashing all around the trench I was in. I huddled against my gun, afraid that I was going to shake right of my skin. Ears ringing despite the plugs I’d picked up in Milliways, I climbed onto the fire-step, the ledge built into the lower part of the ditch. There was a peep hole between the sandbags where I was supposed to fire my weapon. I shifted the hundred pounds of supplies I carried and heard the heard the rapid rat-ta-tat-tat of gunfire. Rae's wards buzzed me. Then I ducked back down, coughing.
"Get down, Krueger!" Eberstark screamed. "What are you thinking! Did anyone see where that shell came from? Strauss, why were you so far away?"
"I was talking to Hitzig," Strauss snapped, raising his rifle to pick off a Brit.
"You have to stay next to me," Eberstark rasped between gunshots. His face was redder than his hair. "Krueger! You're not dead yet, are you?"
"No," I said, panting softly as I jammed the butt of my rifle into my shoulder. Taking aim was almost second nature now, after boot camp. After everything. Katya's warnings rang in my head as I felt the weight of my gun in my hands.
"Good," he said, gasping as another shell rattled the earth. "This is pretty awful." He held out his hands. "Listen you dewberries, we're gonna survive this. You got me?"
Strauss clasped his hand, and I followed suit. We three took up position in the trench, promising to watch each other's backs.
After three days of on again, off again firefights, I was fairly drained from the adrenaline--and somewhat numb. I didn't sleep for those three days, despite curling up with my brothers in the bolt holes dug into the sides of the trench. I could barely keep my gun clean and working. Luckily, I only had three more days of hell at the front lines until I could move to the support trenches a hundred yards away, connected by communication tunnels, where we ferreted supplies and messages by hand at night. A week after that I'd be in the reserves three hundred yards away, where I could rest. For a given value of rest.
Kapitän Kuschel, the cat from before, prowled the trenches, hissing and snapping at anyone who tried to pet him. I noticed he was missing an eye and part of an ear. He had kind of a moth-eaten look to his fur because of the scar-tissue. Still, he carried himself proudly. The cat was grudgingly tolerated, and respected because he was one of us: a veteran.
"Think someone should feed him?" Eberstark asked, and then we all watched as Kuschel clamped down on a fat rat with his vicious jaws.
"I think he's found dinner on his own," I replied.
I applied my whale oil to my feet as often as I could to try to prevent trench foot. We were supposed to be paired up with a boot buddy, but mine, Hertz, a brunette Pol who showed me his pictures of pin up girls, had been taken out by a bomb right off the bat. Our boot buddy was just that--someone to remind us to take off our boots and socks to let them dry at night.
Soon, all I could taste was earth and clay and blood. Rounds whizzed by my head. I saw Strauss smile at me before having his nose shot off. My hands tingled as they gripped my gun in fear and anger at the senseless death of my brother. The horror of it upset my stomach--which stayed with me.
Eberstark, wracked with grief, charged out of the trench, trying to avenge our fallen comrade. I considered shooting him in the leg, but didn't. He made it five steps out before being cut down. That same sick feeling came over me, but I didn't have time to process it: I watched Feldwebel Schwab shoot sixteen men before being bayoneted in the back. Mencken got himself tangled in some barbed wire during the night, trying to crawl back from a sap--a trench ahead of the front lines manned by a couple of unlucky men who had to listen for ambushes.
I leaned against my trench, resting the barrel of my gun on my shoulder. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. My chest ached, a burn which spread to my temples and behind my eyes. My friends are dead. The thought didn't help. I bit my grimy knuckles to keep from strangling on the sob building in my throat. Strauss... Eberstark... I'm so sorry.
My surviving brothers and I were cold and tired and filthy, running low on food and everything else. When I coughed, it was dry and raspy, and I licked my chapped lips more than I should have. My daily rations included four and a half ounces of vegetables which today translated to two carrots with dirt on them. I crammed them into my mouth--dirt and all--because water was too precious to waste on cleaning things. They tasted better than the dried veggies--then our COs only gave us two ounces of those--and I inhaled my larger share of potatoes, too.
I cut the teeth marks off of my biscuits. The fat rats--the ones that Kuschel didn't savage--would get into our packs at night and eat our bread. I grew used to cutting the gnawed-on portions off with my knife, and purifying the water with tablets I'd picked up in the bar and had my mother send me.
“Hey,” Dylan said, nudging me in the trench once there was a lull in the combat, after dawn. I could barely hear him, even after I took my earplugs out. My heart hammered against my chest--What if I go deaf from the shells? I’ll never play the piano again!
“Hey,” Dylan called again, a little louder. A candle guttered above us, resting on bayonets thrust into the soil. "Schneider found some horseflesh and he's cooking it up right now. You want me to save you some?"
I abhored horse meat, even though I couldn't generally tell the difference from beef. Maybe it was because the way I'd had it here, and only here. Still, I could always eat, and what I couldn't choke down, I'd give to Kapitän Kuschel. "Yes, please," I said. "Thanks, Dylan."
Dylan was pale under the mud and grit spattered on his face. “Krueger. Tell me a secret.”
I pressed my back into the clay, ears still ringing. But at least I could hear him again. “All right,” I said, unwrapping a potato. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. “It’s my birthday today.”
“No kiddin'? Hell of a birthday, Krueger,” Dylan said. “I hope it”--and here I knew that if Dylan said, “is a good one,” I would punch him--“gets better.”
“Thanks,” I said, blinking.
“You ever gonna tell me your name?” Dylan said, grinning.
I grinned back. “No.”
“You are begging to get punched,” Dylan said, chuckling. “Well, name or not, I’m glad you’re here with me.”
So it went during our week in the front lines. I was lucky; there was a cellar dug out thirty feet below the surface in the support trench I was assigned, and someone brought dice and cards.
Mortars pounded us ceaselessly at night, kicking up dust cover, and gunfire rained over our heads. Bäcker, my brother to the left of me and who loved gambling, perished, gurgling around the bullet in his throat. I always marveled--when I had the time to--at how quick death came. One moment there were three whole people in the foxhole; in the next, the two to either side of me were missing their faces.
Soon after that, there was another lull. My legs hurt, my back was tight, my mouth was dry, and I was covered in gunpowder, sweat, blood, and mud. I used the time to scarf down my fourteen ounces of slightly-molded egg biscuits. I worried about contracting dysentery sometimes, but there was nothing for it.
"'Autor has died of dysentery'," I murmured, giggling slightly as I remembered playing the Oregon Trail with Oswin. "'Clara has cholera.' 'Autor has exhaustion.'"
And I did; I was exhausted. Sleep had been elusive. But like the dysentery, there was nothing for it, so I tried not to dwell. I leaned against the clay trench and tried to text Rae on my T-Minus.
"What is that?" Dylan asked, crawling over to me.
I cradled my T-Minus protectively against my chest. I'd already turned the light off and muted the sound. "A communication device that allows me to send messages across universes."
Dylan laughed. "You're so weird, Krueger. What is it really?"
"My good luck shell," I told him. "My sister gave it to me."
Dylan scoffed. "Yeah, right," he said, but I thought I could detect a hint of envy in his voice.
"It's worked so far, hasn't it?" I said, with false bravado.
I put my T-Minus away--and just in time, too, as a burst of bullets showered us. I planted my feet properly in the mud. I jammed the butt of my gun into my shoulder, sighting my target moving through my crosshairs. Time slowed as my heart pounded against my chest, and Katya's training kicked in as I pulled the trigger.
I was getting better at making corpses.
Still, I had to admit they were ingeniously constructed. I knew from my reading in the bar that by the end of 1914, there were 475 miles of trenches stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier, running through Belgium. Parapets--the front wall nearest to the enemy--were often shored up with wood and covered with sandbags. The parados, the back walls, were constructed in a similar manner. The "floor" was a drainage ditch called a sump, covered by duck boards.
Our enemies--the French and Brits--shot at us from trenches only a hundred yards away. In between us was a landscape chewed up and shelled to hell called No Man's Land. It was covered in barbed wire, and I'd already seen more than one person tangled in it and shot. Snipers dotted No Man's Land, hiding in fake trees.
Trench life was disgusting, and no more so than on the front lines. With so many of us living in a claustrophobic, half-underground space--and getting shelled and shot at--tempers rode high. Food, empty tins, and other trash littered the grounds, and no one could ignore the presence of the latrines--boxes over deep holes in the ground. We couldn't wash for weeks at a time, and everyone had lice. There were also the occasional corpses--which attracted rats--waiting to be buried under black crosses. The smell of people putrefying was horrendous.
Crown Prince Rupprecht commanded the troops, demanding that we hold Vimy Ridge at Neuve Chapelle. It was there that I experienced my first shell, in the middle of the night. Rae's Seeing Things Clearly ward, which I likened to precognition, kicked in, and I picked up the whine of an incoming mortar before anyone else. I barked, "shell!" before I realized I'd opened my mouth.
I ran through the zig zag pattern of the trench, dragging Oberleutnant Nadel with me. I dropped to my knees on the duck boards as I felt the bomb burst five yards away. The sound was terrifying, a great thunderclap of a sound, and the mud flew high into the air around us.
Nadel raised his head from the ground and mouthed something. I couldn't hear anything but my ears ringing. Then he gave me a thumbs up. I realized that we both would have died from the bomb, and trembled at the thought.
At dawn, we'd all line up with our bayonets fixed on the other trenches in something called the stand-to, to guard against a raid. We'd discharge our weapons in an attack named, "the morning hate." Apparently it was to clear out people who may have tried to ambush us during the night. Charging the trenches was suicide in the daylight, so my COs--one of whom was always on duty, making us comfortable--sent out patrols of four or five men at night to crawl across No Man's Land and eavesdrop on the enemy, or repair the barbed wire fences.
After the morning hate, we cleaned our rifles and presented them for inspection. And then we all had breakfast, which was sort of a truce between the Central and Allied troops. We complained loudly and cheerfully about the terrible food--and, most importantly, how little there was.
Nadel assigned me muckwork today--I had to drain the trench and repair the duckboards. It was wet work, as we'd been rained on for the past two days, but better than repairing the cesspools or sandbags. Strauss had first watch for the two hour stretch at the fire-step today, which was good. I trusted Strauss. Deserting the fire-step while on watch was punishable by firing squad. He wasn't stupid enough to desert.
During my watch, I spotted--of all things--an orange-striped tabby easily squeezing through the barbed wire of No Man's Land. "What is that cat doing there?" I asked Strauss, who was resting in the bottom of the trench beside me.
"Oh, one of the older guys told me about him. That's Kapitän Kuschel," Strauss said, whittling. He was always whittling something, and some of his carvings were really quite good. "He's a real beast, but he eats the rats and whatever people feed him."
I glanced at the cat through my crosshairs, and noticed that it was approaching us. He reminded me of my kitten, Etude, and how he'd curl up on my shoulders while I was working. A wave of homesickness threatened to strangle me, and I choked it down to focus on the orange tabby. "I bet the Brits have a different name for him."
"Probably something dumber than ours," Strauss said, grinning.
A few more watches later, it was dusk again, and time for our supplies to be replenished amidst the usual attacks. We had another stand-to. Mortars broke the earth, crashing all around the trench I was in. I huddled against my gun, afraid that I was going to shake right of my skin. Ears ringing despite the plugs I’d picked up in Milliways, I climbed onto the fire-step, the ledge built into the lower part of the ditch. There was a peep hole between the sandbags where I was supposed to fire my weapon. I shifted the hundred pounds of supplies I carried and heard the heard the rapid rat-ta-tat-tat of gunfire. Rae's wards buzzed me. Then I ducked back down, coughing.
"Get down, Krueger!" Eberstark screamed. "What are you thinking! Did anyone see where that shell came from? Strauss, why were you so far away?"
"I was talking to Hitzig," Strauss snapped, raising his rifle to pick off a Brit.
"You have to stay next to me," Eberstark rasped between gunshots. His face was redder than his hair. "Krueger! You're not dead yet, are you?"
"No," I said, panting softly as I jammed the butt of my rifle into my shoulder. Taking aim was almost second nature now, after boot camp. After everything. Katya's warnings rang in my head as I felt the weight of my gun in my hands.
"Good," he said, gasping as another shell rattled the earth. "This is pretty awful." He held out his hands. "Listen you dewberries, we're gonna survive this. You got me?"
Strauss clasped his hand, and I followed suit. We three took up position in the trench, promising to watch each other's backs.
After three days of on again, off again firefights, I was fairly drained from the adrenaline--and somewhat numb. I didn't sleep for those three days, despite curling up with my brothers in the bolt holes dug into the sides of the trench. I could barely keep my gun clean and working. Luckily, I only had three more days of hell at the front lines until I could move to the support trenches a hundred yards away, connected by communication tunnels, where we ferreted supplies and messages by hand at night. A week after that I'd be in the reserves three hundred yards away, where I could rest. For a given value of rest.
Kapitän Kuschel, the cat from before, prowled the trenches, hissing and snapping at anyone who tried to pet him. I noticed he was missing an eye and part of an ear. He had kind of a moth-eaten look to his fur because of the scar-tissue. Still, he carried himself proudly. The cat was grudgingly tolerated, and respected because he was one of us: a veteran.
"Think someone should feed him?" Eberstark asked, and then we all watched as Kuschel clamped down on a fat rat with his vicious jaws.
"I think he's found dinner on his own," I replied.
I applied my whale oil to my feet as often as I could to try to prevent trench foot. We were supposed to be paired up with a boot buddy, but mine, Hertz, a brunette Pol who showed me his pictures of pin up girls, had been taken out by a bomb right off the bat. Our boot buddy was just that--someone to remind us to take off our boots and socks to let them dry at night.
Soon, all I could taste was earth and clay and blood. Rounds whizzed by my head. I saw Strauss smile at me before having his nose shot off. My hands tingled as they gripped my gun in fear and anger at the senseless death of my brother. The horror of it upset my stomach--which stayed with me.
Eberstark, wracked with grief, charged out of the trench, trying to avenge our fallen comrade. I considered shooting him in the leg, but didn't. He made it five steps out before being cut down. That same sick feeling came over me, but I didn't have time to process it: I watched Feldwebel Schwab shoot sixteen men before being bayoneted in the back. Mencken got himself tangled in some barbed wire during the night, trying to crawl back from a sap--a trench ahead of the front lines manned by a couple of unlucky men who had to listen for ambushes.
I leaned against my trench, resting the barrel of my gun on my shoulder. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. My chest ached, a burn which spread to my temples and behind my eyes. My friends are dead. The thought didn't help. I bit my grimy knuckles to keep from strangling on the sob building in my throat. Strauss... Eberstark... I'm so sorry.
My surviving brothers and I were cold and tired and filthy, running low on food and everything else. When I coughed, it was dry and raspy, and I licked my chapped lips more than I should have. My daily rations included four and a half ounces of vegetables which today translated to two carrots with dirt on them. I crammed them into my mouth--dirt and all--because water was too precious to waste on cleaning things. They tasted better than the dried veggies--then our COs only gave us two ounces of those--and I inhaled my larger share of potatoes, too.
I cut the teeth marks off of my biscuits. The fat rats--the ones that Kuschel didn't savage--would get into our packs at night and eat our bread. I grew used to cutting the gnawed-on portions off with my knife, and purifying the water with tablets I'd picked up in the bar and had my mother send me.
“Hey,” Dylan said, nudging me in the trench once there was a lull in the combat, after dawn. I could barely hear him, even after I took my earplugs out. My heart hammered against my chest--What if I go deaf from the shells? I’ll never play the piano again!
“Hey,” Dylan called again, a little louder. A candle guttered above us, resting on bayonets thrust into the soil. "Schneider found some horseflesh and he's cooking it up right now. You want me to save you some?"
I abhored horse meat, even though I couldn't generally tell the difference from beef. Maybe it was because the way I'd had it here, and only here. Still, I could always eat, and what I couldn't choke down, I'd give to Kapitän Kuschel. "Yes, please," I said. "Thanks, Dylan."
Dylan was pale under the mud and grit spattered on his face. “Krueger. Tell me a secret.”
I pressed my back into the clay, ears still ringing. But at least I could hear him again. “All right,” I said, unwrapping a potato. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. “It’s my birthday today.”
“No kiddin'? Hell of a birthday, Krueger,” Dylan said. “I hope it”--and here I knew that if Dylan said, “is a good one,” I would punch him--“gets better.”
“Thanks,” I said, blinking.
“You ever gonna tell me your name?” Dylan said, grinning.
I grinned back. “No.”
“You are begging to get punched,” Dylan said, chuckling. “Well, name or not, I’m glad you’re here with me.”
So it went during our week in the front lines. I was lucky; there was a cellar dug out thirty feet below the surface in the support trench I was assigned, and someone brought dice and cards.
Mortars pounded us ceaselessly at night, kicking up dust cover, and gunfire rained over our heads. Bäcker, my brother to the left of me and who loved gambling, perished, gurgling around the bullet in his throat. I always marveled--when I had the time to--at how quick death came. One moment there were three whole people in the foxhole; in the next, the two to either side of me were missing their faces.
Soon after that, there was another lull. My legs hurt, my back was tight, my mouth was dry, and I was covered in gunpowder, sweat, blood, and mud. I used the time to scarf down my fourteen ounces of slightly-molded egg biscuits. I worried about contracting dysentery sometimes, but there was nothing for it.
"'Autor has died of dysentery'," I murmured, giggling slightly as I remembered playing the Oregon Trail with Oswin. "'Clara has cholera.' 'Autor has exhaustion.'"
And I did; I was exhausted. Sleep had been elusive. But like the dysentery, there was nothing for it, so I tried not to dwell. I leaned against the clay trench and tried to text Rae on my T-Minus.
"What is that?" Dylan asked, crawling over to me.
I cradled my T-Minus protectively against my chest. I'd already turned the light off and muted the sound. "A communication device that allows me to send messages across universes."
Dylan laughed. "You're so weird, Krueger. What is it really?"
"My good luck shell," I told him. "My sister gave it to me."
Dylan scoffed. "Yeah, right," he said, but I thought I could detect a hint of envy in his voice.
"It's worked so far, hasn't it?" I said, with false bravado.
I put my T-Minus away--and just in time, too, as a burst of bullets showered us. I planted my feet properly in the mud. I jammed the butt of my gun into my shoulder, sighting my target moving through my crosshairs. Time slowed as my heart pounded against my chest, and Katya's training kicked in as I pulled the trigger.
I was getting better at making corpses.