WWI - Corpses

[herr_bookman]

My last day of rest in the reserve trenches was coming to a close, and I was needed at the front. While I rested, I kept my hands and nails meticulously clean; I hated the feeling of trench dirt under them, turning them black.

I also played cards and dice, and gambled my unwanted rations of cigarettes away. I lost at dice often, and grew very popular, but few people could beat me at strip poker. When I first played it, my skin was permanently tinted red, but after a few times in the buff, I learned the game--and how to avoid blushing.

Jokes were our lifeblood, and black humor reigned supreme. I had a million of them. "What did the fleeing soldiers tell their General after he called out, 'Stop men! Don’t you love your country?'"

"Oh, yeah? What?" Dylan asked, nudging another one of our brothers for a place in the circle.

"'Yes, by God,'" I said, adopting a proper narrative cadence, "'and I’m going back to it just as fast as I can.'"

Dylan and the rest of the men laughed uproariously.

"True story," I explained. "The 3rd Wisconsin broke at the battle of Winchester in 1862, and was yelled at by General Major Nathanial Banks."

"No one cares about that," Dylan said, still chuckling, and gave me a noogie. "Stick to your funny business, awright?"

Sometimes, there'd be a gorgeous patch of sun breaking through the rain, and I'd take my boots off and air out my feet. That was very important to me, and more than one brother of mine tried to put mud in my boots as a prank and ended up with a bloody nose for the trouble. I avoided the braziers; cooking for pleasure was something I did in during bar life. My past life.

It was when I was in the reserve trenches that I thought about the bigger picture of the war, which I'd read about in the bar. The front was a series of booms far away; I could almost put it out of my mind. German warfare consisted of investing in guns. Big ones, like howitzers and machine guns. The French decided they'd try speed and surprise, and it worked well for them. The Brits seemed to have no idea what they were doing.

I also worried about my future during these times. My schooling was useless here. Sure, I could interpret a piano concerto flawlessly--which made me think of Emcee--or quote something from an old battle, but that didn’t help me aim my gun. I knew how to run from a mortar, and how to gutter a cook fire with my hands, and how to pretend to be dead. I knew nothing but war anymore. I didn’t know what I was to do after the war, either. Some of the men--the lucky ones--had employment to go back to. I didn’t even sit for my Arbitur examination, and my mother’s inn was dying due to the war. Even if I lived, I was just a soldier boy.

So, soldiering was all I knew, and I was good at it. And I had plenty of time to put my skills to the test. An attack at our changing of the guard--when we moved back to the front after our time in the reserves--was almost expected. We tried to be as stealthy as we could when marching to the front through the communication trenches, but there was no way to hide the increased activity.

This time, the Brits raided us. Rae's Seeing Things Clearly ward alerted me to a Brit that held a grenade. I shot him in the chest, and it blew up in his hand. Because of the warning I called out, the fight was quick, and clean up was quicker. We were supremely lucky; there was only eighteen wounded and six dead on our side at the end.

A fresh crop of recruits came to reinforce our company. I didn't get to know them; they were all dead men, and rather stupid, too. Once a couple of them smoked at night, giving the French easy targets with their glowing cherries. They couldn't tell the difference between the shells or from whence they came. I watched their fresh faces pale as soon as a bomb hit and shook my head, feeling old.

Kapitän Kuschel, the orange tabby, continued to be a comforting presence. He clawed at my hands when I reached out to him, but took the meat I saved for him. In return, he killed the rats. It was always fun watching him work; no love was spared for the rats.

Combat--even at night--was largely boring. It consisted of long periods of waiting punctuated by screaming and gunfire and excitement, and my shoulders quickly grew sore from both recoil and tensing with anticipation. Once on the front again, I couldn't sleep.

I could count on Dylan to crawl over and break the silence. "Hey, pignut. How are you?"

"Mm," I said softly. I leaned against the traverse--the angled part of the trench. They were built in zig-zags, so a Tommy wouldn't be able to shoot us all in a line if they managed to breach the parapet. The sharp angles of the trench also helped limit the lethal proximity to blasts. "I'm kind of sad, Dylan."

"Why's that?"

"Because Nadel has really cracked down on me as an artist," I told him, shaking my head mournfully. "He says I'll draw enemy fire."

Dylan laughed his skinny butt off. "You're horrible, Krueger. Remind me not to ask how you're doing again."

"Okay," I said, cheered by his reaction. "Don't ask how I'm doing."

"I got one for you," Dylan said flatly. "Why did the private get sent home after prematurely ejaculating?"

"Why?"

"It was a dishonorable discharge."

I barked out a laugh and opened my mouth to counter with my own pun, but the crackle-pop of gunfire interrupted me. We pressed our chests to the sides of the trench and returned fire. Sweat beaded along my hairline under my helmet, and it was difficult to see our enemy with all the mortar dust. It made me cough.

I glanced to Dylan, firing his gun beside me. I knew then that I wasn't fighting for my country--none of us were. We were fighting for each other, for our buddies, and to survive. That's all it was. I could lift my rifle because my friends were there with me.

Once, during a lull, Nadel drew us up in a quiet huddle. "Men, I'd like to commend the soldier who took down the most enemies today."

Dylan puffed out his chest, swaggering forward. "Oh, you shouldn't have, Oberleutnant--"

Nadel shot him a look. Then, smiling, he pointed to where the cat was cleaning himself. "Congratulations, Kapitän Kuschel, for taking down nineteen rats."

We all laughed, and laughed hard, ribbing Dylan and nudging him with our elbows. "Krause, you jerk!"

A lot of my time was spent waiting. Once, there was a short period of time on the front where we stopped exchanging shots with the enemy except for the morning hate. They were storing up for an attack, or so we guessed. After about six days of maddening quiet, they bombed us back to our artillery lines.

Screams rang out in the night. Hails of earth and hot metal sprinkled us as the shells ate away at the parapets. I thanked my lucky stars that I was stationed in one of the deeper trenches. The whine-boom of the shells was never ending; I could barely stick my head up without risking it. I crouched down on the duckboards, huddled around my gun. Oberleutnent Nadel came to our trench to report that three machine guns had been bombed out.

My heart pounded in my chest. The bombardment continued. No one spoke; we exchanged hollow looks with one another, wishing for it to be over, wishing for something productive to do to pass the time while we were bombed.

On the fifth night, I inhaled a cold potato, the last of my supplies. We had run out of food and water a while ago, given that our supply lines were compromised by so many shells. One of the new recruits trembled against the parapet, raking his teeth over his bottom lip again and again until it bled. I'd been watching him for a while, watching his hungry looks to the top of the sandbags. By the third day, he'd bolted out of the trench, crying out savagely before being shot in the back. We dragged him back in and laid him out on the duckboards, but there was nothing we could do; the bullet had gone clean through him and exposed his lung.

Night again. The bombing stopped abruptly, and soon afterward we could see the quickly approaching men, their helmets gleaming in the ghostly midnight. The onslaught was relentless. Most of them were cut down by our machine gun nests, or tangled in the barbed wire. After a while, my brain registered only a detail or two about each person charging me. A beard. Wide, frightened eyes. One arm hanging on by a thread. A shorter Frenchman who looked amazingly like Joly--and I balked, imagining the smile of my friend. I bit my tongue straight through, my hands shaking around my gun and my chest heaving. Someone cut him down for me. Rae's ward kicked in again. Grenade, grenade, grenade!

My brothers and I turned the British back and pursued, shooting as we went and slipping over the greasy dead and wounded, who would cling to our legs. All I could think was, run run run fire fire run reload barbed wire! I pulled the pin of my grenade out with my teeth and threw it into the dug out in front of me, ignoring the screams and the hail of earth. I fell to my belly and fired at the fleeing, surviving Brits--and then I’m called back, the fight's over, we needed to retreat back to our own trenches.

Run run run.

After that, all was quiet again. I realized I'd taken shrapnel in my thigh--just a surface wound--and hoofed it back to the medical tent after receiving permission. The doctors there sewed it up and sent me back to the front.

Once there, I inhaled a portion of my rations. Hunger was a constant, yawning companion; there was never enough food, and what was had was potatoes and turnips. I considered eating the rats more than once. There were plenty of them, and they were fat from the dead--a thought which always turned me off the idea of eating them.

There were too many dead to bury, and we could hear the wounded crying out and weeping in No Man’s Land. Nadel called for volunteers to recover them. I raised my hand, as usual. He paired me with one of my brothers, a man named Schneider that I'd only seen, never talked to. I knew he liked bananas, and had a wife and kids. We shook hands and kept silent during the work. I tried to grab as many boots as I could, not liking the way the men's heads lolled against my shoulders. The dying bodies all smelled of blood and clay and rot, and sometimes we had to scatter the rats to retrieve them.

Dear Rae... How are you? I thought, composing letters in my head rather than focus on the groaning weight in my hands named Nimitz. He taught me how to smoke cigarettes, though I never took to them. Nimitz looked up at me with bright blue eyes--eyes that reminded me of Gene Hunt's on a good day, eyes that could look right through you and strip you bare--and I felt sick.

I went back to the letter. I miss the way you used to press your cheek to mine when you embrace me. I miss your alliteration. I miss your everything. The wards have been useful, so thanks for that. Love-- I slipped in the mud and went down on one knee, breaking my concentration. Schneider asked if I was all right, and I nodded, gripping Nimitz's boots tightly and getting back to my feet.

My brothers and I hauled the wounded--every one of them known to me, my friends--for an hour or so. Nadel sent me back to my trench, so I used the time to inhale two steamed potatoes.

At dusk the next night, gunfire sailed over our heads. I squeezed my trigger, imagining Nadel's commands to reload and fire. I fired my gun long after my hands had begun to ache.

Soon, I leaned back against the trench, running out of bullets. We started with six magazines of ten rounds of ammo in our webbings, or ammo pouches. We also carried a further sixty rounds in bandoliers, or cotton bags that hung around our necks. Our COs also issued us two grenades, which I used right off. Counting ammo was almost an unconscious thought. I could always ballpark how much I had; there was nothing worse than the 'click' of an empty gun, so I tried to never run out.

I glanced around the trench. The man who'd was at my left was dead now--and handsome, I thought strangely--staring up at nothingness with bright, green eyes, so I took his ammo. I didn't like robbing the dead again and again, but I justified it to myself, thinking that he wasn't using it.

The corpse was Abendroth, and he was my friend, too. He loved good eggs and bad jokes, and he was always good-naturedly complaining about the lack of fruit. "Who's a guy gotta screw to get a tangerine around here?" he'd ask, and everyone in the mess would laugh with him.

“Thank you, Abendroth,” I whispered, placing a hand on the man’s caved-in head. His helmet was missing. It was easier to pretend that the crusty texture under my fingers--the soft, lumpy portions of skin and blood--were due to Abendroth’s concussion rather than his getting shot. I closed his eyes.

Then the rain started, a cold, unholy downpour. Abendroth was my constant companion, collecting water in his open mouth. I reloaded and fired, and Abendroth sat with me. A soaked rat chewed on his fingers, and I murdered the little vermin in disgust.

"What's that target doing walking around?" I murmured absurdly, raising my gun. Rain pinged off my helmet, distracting me. "He doesn't even know he's dead yet. A walking dead man. Right, Abendroth?"

Abendroth said nothing. I was so tired and keyed up, I half expected him to. Eventually I tried to sleep, but the corpse of my brother prevented it. I kept thinking he’d rise up, like the zombies of the bar. Rain flooded the trench to my ankles, and made my hands ache.

I must have dozed, for I woke abruptly, shocked to hear nothing. I shook the water off of my arms and climbed onto the fire-step. Mud-covered lumps littered the battlefield. There were cat paw prints near the sandbags. And, beautifully, white mist rose up from the shell craters. It was as if the earth itself was breathing little clouds into the freezing air.

I felt the hush over the land was welcomed, though it gave me chills. The sun rose, and I watched, fascinated with the mist hanging over the corpses. Like souls. The haze soon burned off of Abendroth and the rest, leaving behind mud and devastation--and silence. I watched, and listened, and felt absurdly lonely.

Shots rang out. The spell broke, and I raised my gun, once more a part of the war.