The Storms of Fall

For a sweet, precious short time I slept. In my head once again I was a child, happy and healthy, the dear precious love of my father and mother. I felt something tickle my feet and it stirred me. I went into the half-dream state, and my stomach tightened. I could smell the cold and the damp, the rot and the filth around me. I looked down as I shook my leg, feeling almost nothing but seeing a rat make off with one of my trench-rotted black, dead toes. I kicked at him but didn't care anymore. It was 1915 and that day I was going into battle. My hands were shaking from the lack of strong drink and the need for proper nutrition.  I forced myself awake and slid out of my hammock onto the dirty wet floor of the earthen cave that myself and a dozen others called home. I had slept only two hours in three days but it was an eternity of bliss compared to the reality of death, lice, human excrement and vomit, rats, mice, gas, and bombardment we faced day after day. I had volunteered for this, for love of country and glory. That morning I stood ready to storm the enemy fortifications as the rain beat down on us, mixed with wet snow. The weather was deplorable, but soon the winter would come and be worse. I couldn't even remember the last time my feet were dry and I struggled under the weight of my equipment as ten thousand men prepared to meet their maker. The whistle blew, and I scrambled to the top, slipping several times. Beside me, a dear friend was shot in the face and fell back dead. I had grown so jaded I felt nothing. I marched into the murderous machine guns and blasting mortars wondering which bullet would claim my life. I moved on past mounds of dead and dying, grown men screaming for their mothers, some begging either for help or the bullet in my rifle that could end their pain. The enemy artillery began, and I sought safety in a shell crater, only the rain had filled it with mud and the enemy machine guns had claimed others who have tried to use the crater's safety. The blood mixed with the filth and the indentation of earth was rife with the smell of death. I tried to get my hundred pound gear off to free myself, but it was too late. I drowned that day; my final gasps spent choking on mud blood and human shit and piss. My In the next moments I was sent to face eternal torture and suffering for taking up arms against my fellow man. I had volunteered. I had volunteered.