Gunshots and the sound of bombs dropping fills the air, sending shock waves each second. Chaos and madness envelop the atmosphere around us hurtling waves of panic and fear. Blood covers the land and death orchestrates the rhythmic attacks on the battlefield. My heart is pounding in my ear and my brain seems to flutter away from all rational thought.
The gunshots seem to match my heartbeat now.
Pump.Boom.
Pump.Boom.
I'm scared, I'm beyond scared and oh god I don't want to die. “I don't want to die, I don't want to die” I repeat over and over again clutching my heart in one hand and my gun in another. “Get up lad what are you doing?” barks the lieutenant in my ear. Dragging me onto my feet with a shove of his hand he pushes me onto the battlefield and out of the trench.
“Make your country proud so-” poof. He drops dead next to me, his limp body slagging over my leg. Caught in a frenzy of panic and fear and abandoning all rational thought I charge towards the German trench. I become a machine, firing blindly at anything that seems to move. Crossing no man's land, I reach the trench and am surrounded by gas. Quickly putting on my mask I see nothing but a fog of brownish gas. “This is for making fun of our tea you german dirtbags” screams a soldier in the distance. I run towards the voice and accidentally stumble upon something.
As I focus I see it's a boy, no older than 17. I start to raise my gun but then I see his eyes. Liquid brown, full of fear and confusion mirroring my own.
That.
That right there, in the midst of WW1 and in a German Trench reminded me of something so indescribably ‘human’ and vulnerable that I decided to let him go.
“Run boy run” is all that I can manage to say to him before another one of my fellow soldiers appears and shoots him right in the center of his head.
As the fog clears up I can hear hooting from our army about defeating those germans but all I see is a wounded horse in the middle of no man's land. Heaven only knows how he got there. The poor creature must have been hit by an oncoming grenade. An ugly gash runs along the side of his belly. He groans and looks at me with the same eyes of the young German soldier and all I can do is helplessly stare back at him. He dies in a few minutes, a helpless creature caught up in the middle of a war. Like me.
“Come on George lets celebrate”
“Get up George, come on we won”
Did we general? Did we?
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