WWI - Water

[herr_bookman]

Because of the incessant rain, when I went to the front lines once again from my time in the reserve trenches, Nadel led us into a trench filled waist-deep with muddy water. I balked at first. My pack will be soaked. I knew that I'd get sick from my time in the trench, knew that once the cold weather settled into my lungs I'd have a hell of time coughing it out.

It was eight days before my boots touched dry ground again, and I worried about my feet rotting off, despite weatherproofing my boots with the beeswax my mother had sent me. My feet tingled and itched and burned, and I knew I had blisters on them from standing so long. Shivering with chills, I knew that I'd probably contracted trench foot in the damp, that I'd end up with shrapnel in my body, that I'd soon have to charge into a machine gun nest with a bayonet.

Kapitän Kuschel interrupted my thoughts by curling up at the top of the trench, in between the sandbags. He yowled uncomfortably.

"You don't like the water either, huh?" I asked softly, shivering. I reached out tentatively, seeing if he'd finally let me pet him.

He did. The tabby butted his head against my palm, rubbing against my skin. I gently scratched behind his ears, marveling at how soft his remaining fur was. Soon, though, he scratched my fingers.

"You fickle mooch," I said, considerably cheered, as the cat--now ignoring me--went after some promisingly rat-like sounds from among some piled sandbags, tail-tip twitching. "Thanks."

Those eight days dragged on, though they were never empty. I sat in the water. I pet the cat when he'd let me--which he did more and more often. I played cards. Rae's ward buzzed me more times than I could count, saving me, and I felt guilty. And I ate, choking down potatoes and egg biscuits.

I was so sick of potatoes. I never wanted to see another potato as long as I lived. On lucky days, we received a fifth of an ounce of snuff, which I hoarded to trade for more food. More biscuits. Sometimes a four and a half ounce package of green beans. Everyone wanted to trade their potatoes away, and there were few takers.

Mostly I fired my gun, threw grenades, and killed people. I could remember how each of them looked in the moment before they died. The grenades were especially messy.

"You've done a good job, soldier," Oberleutnant Nadel told me one day. "You've come a long way." I shuddered.

I recognized Rae's sometimes haunted expression on the faces of my brothers--and enemies. I wondered if they saw it on my face, too.

Dylan handed me a folded rag, wet with the last of the clean water from his canteen, and the act reminded me so much of Lohengrin that I choked out a sob.

At night I tossed and turned in the water of the trench, dreaming that I'd found the bar, that I could drink decent tea and fly again and finally show my friends how much I loved them. When I awoke with a start, I wept miserably--bitterly, and without sound.

Before the shooting became truly awful, I used to create and recreate in my head lists of all those things I wanted to get done. Find the bar again. Eat more strawberries. Write farewell letters to the people I knew I would miss. Make love.

Live.

But I knew--through every fast breath I forced into my lungs, every time I lifted my gun--that there wasn’t even another year or month or day left in me to do those things, and there never would be.

Except... Except maybe... My fierce gaze trailed out of the trench, looking for a door. My fingers tightened around the cool wood and metal of my gun, knuckles white. Don't let me die, I thought, chapped lips sealed shut in the dead of the night. Please.

There was no answer.

Brittle, I laughed.