After The Fact

Another instalment in The Poet's War today, and again, this one is a direct sequel to the last.

After The Fact

20^th February 1915

Everything had gone wrong, and the words had stopped. The blood that splashed across the trench wall was just blood, the look of dawning comprehension on the young boy’s face before the knife fell and froze it was simply that. He understood, and he died. Smith always wished he had been the one to do it; unlike Johnson he would not have relished the deed.

The mission had, according to the papers at his fingertips, gone off without a hitch. Two maps and a sheaf of probably useless papers had been recovered, only one man had been killed (a hero’s death, the letter he had yet to sign assured the bereaved family) and there were two less Germans in the world. In his more lucid moments, Smith couldn’t help but wonder if, somewhere just a few hundred yards away, another man was sitting in this same place, papers waiting on another desk to tell half the story.

And somewhere, he knew that three men lay face-down in the mud, blood joining that of a thousand others, all red, red, red. Private A. (Alan? Adrian? Anthony?)  Carter, the letter told him, and all he could do was sign it. That was the closest he’d come to ever knowing the man, this same letter that he’d sent too many times before. And two other men, who to all intents nothing more than numbers on a report, neatly filled out and filed and forgotten.

He reached for the whiskey, trying to recall if it was his second or third of the night. It didn’t matter; he didn’t do this often. But there were days like this that merited something a little stronger than coffee. From the corner of his eye, Smith noticed Johnson giving him a suspicious glare, but ignored it and slammed the glass back to the desk. He would not be condemned by the man he had seen smile as he took a life.

He folded the papers away and placed them in the prepared envelopes, and paused for a moment before placing the lid on the pen. There was so much more to write, but where to write it. How could he tell some far-off mother that her little Alan (he looked like an Alan) had died a hero’s death, how he screamed as the bullet tore into his back as he tried to run, crying, for a home he could never reach?

How could he write the names of the men he never knew in that tiny box that asked only for a number? No one would ask, and no one would expect him to tell. This was now a war of paperwork, and names didn’t matter. Only numbers, and the simple addition and subtraction of human life. The glass came to his lips again, disappointingly empty.

“Sir,” said Robson for the third time, the words finally penetrating the haze of barbed-wire thoughts and land-mine nightmares. “The van’s arrived for HQ, sir. Those forms, the letter. You want me to run them up there, sir?”

Smith struggled to his feet, straightened his uniform into some semblance of order, and shook his head. “No, Robson, it’s all right. I’ll do it. I could do with a walk.” He paused for a second, catching Robson’s face fall in that way it always did when told to wait behind. Maybe he was being a little harsh on the boy, but he needed to get out of the dugout. “You can join me if you want, lad. Christ knows no one likes sitting around here.” He shot a pointed glance at Johnson, who did not look up from polishing his knife.

He would never wash the stains away, Smith thought, thinking of Macbeth and that terrible butchery of it the dramatics society had put on in 1912. The mad man, huddling in the middle of the stage, backlit and howling, soaking his hands in red paint that would not wash off. Melodrama at its worst, and yet oddly appropriate in this emphasised, vivid hell.

***

Robson left the dugout in Smith’s shadow, the light momentarily obscured and then splintered around the corporal’s form. He noted the revolver at his waist as the handle caught the light, and for a second, envied the fact it had been used so recently, while his own rifle lay unfired by his bunk. The corporal had been given the chance he had not; why did he look so broken and haunted in the early morning glare?

He struggled to keep pace through the mud, and all too often slipped from the soaked duckboards, saving himself only by a hand shoved against the trench wall. Smith did not once look back to help him or reprimand him. It was as if he were in another place entirely.

Even when they passed Anders, cheerily heading back towards the dugout with his latest culinary ammunition, Smith didn’t return the greeting of the only man he seemed a friend with, staring resolutely ahead and barely even breaking his step to let the batman past. Robson nodded a good morning, but was similarly ignored. Everyone seemed to be in their own world this morning, and as always, he was an outsider to all of them. Quite what he had been expecting he had almost forgotten, but it was not this half-silence and muttered curses and constant fear and anger.

The corporal had his own problems; every day the whiskey bottle he kept on his desk was emptier, and every night he was the last one to sleep, sitting up into the long hours of the morning with nothing but a glass and that bloody ever-present notebook. Robson found himself unable to care what he disclosed to those pages. It didn’t matter.

Johnson, he was out just for revenge. There was only one reason he spent hours cleaning an re-cleaning his rifle and bayonet, and it wasn’t for inspection; his boots went unpolished, his uniform unpatched. He lived only to deny others that state. Robson could understand that; it was the most base and inexplicable aspect of human nature he knew all too well. Those that cannot have do what they must to deny others the same.

Anders, well, he was just the cook. And the cleaner. And whenever there was something to be done, he’d do it. He kept the dugout running while Johnson and the corporal tore themselves apart with their demons. But where was the glory in that? Did the ageing man sometimes wonder what it would be like to rise up over that flimsy barricade, into the wasteland and wait for something new to come?

And Robson, what was he? An outsider to all of these, a stranger they refused to come to know. He was a hero-to-be that would never get to claim that right. He was betrayed, victim of so many promises not delivered on.

No, he was a soldier, and he would do his duty while these other, lesser men fought themselves.

*** 

Author's Notes: 

- This one is very much a character piece; you get a very introspective view of the inner workings of Smith's mind and how's it's changing, and then the complete opposite of that in Robson's deliberately flawed analysis of each character in turn. Obviously, Robson's thoughts are too idiosyncratic to be reliable, but one also has to question whether Smith has kept enough of a grip on reality to be a trustworthy narrator. 

- The change in narrator is meant to add to that effect, and work to create an impression that it's impossible to understand this situation. Smith and Robson both have such diametrically opposed views that they can't both be right, but the question is, are either of them? Well, I shan't spoil it here, but there's going to be a lot more of that going forward, and I may even re-write some of the narratively later pieces to begun to tie all of this together a little more. It's rather strange to see how far this story has come from its beginning that was the end, and how it really has taken on a life of its own. 

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to leave a comment. 

The Sentry

It's been a while since I've had time to write anything decent, but I've finally managed to put together the next piece in the Poet's War series. It's taken me a long time to decide where I wanted to take this one, but in hindsight I'm actually rather happy with the direction it's taken. Without further ado...

The Sentry

19^th February 1915, France

In the dark, the party were almost invisible as they crawled across the emptiness of no-man's-land; their presence was only betrayed by the tiniest movements and shifts in the blackness to a deeper shade. Shadows in the dark, silent and deadly. Ghosts in the night.

‘Ghosts in the night?’ Where did that come from? Robson thought as he watched from afar, casually peering through the gap between the sandbags, fighting for a glimpse of Smith and the others before they vanished from sight. Must be the corporal's blasted poems.

He kicked the dirt at his feet and stared up at the stars and tried to think about anything but where they were going and where he was not.

‘All this way for this, and the bastards beat me to it. Typical.’

 ***

Smith eased forward another inch, all too aware of the scraping thudding sound his rifle was making against the dirt, and the glint of moonlight at the point of his bayonet, and the creeping, crawling sensation as some unseen, multi-legged insect tap-danced across the back of his motionless hand. He resisted the urge to swat it away; any move could mean death for him, or worse, for his comrades lying in the dirt just feet from him, faces staring down, maybe wondering if the faces of their own fallen brothers in arms were staring back up from the blackness of this graveyard of the nameless, nationless dead.

What did it matter from where the bone came that crunched under his shifting boot? Why did he suddenly care about the name of the corpse whose foetid odour forced him to silence Johnson’s gagging with a sharp nudge? Who these men were that lay in the mud with him, living and dead, from worlds apart, were? Where they came from? None of it mattered. And yet, it did.

***

Robson folded the photograph back into his chest pocket, feeling his heart beat slightly faster against it, and drew the letter from his pack, five days old and creased beyond recognition. So many times he’d read and reread the meaningless words, and now he was reading it again. It was too dark to see, but he knew it by heart now. He sneered when she talked of an ‘afterwards’, when they could be together again. He laughed when she promised him she’d wait for him; he wished she wouldn’t. It would give him a reason to leave.

His fingers tore absent-mindedly at the corner of the crumpled paper, not quite ready to complete the motion on and down and rip the hollow words apart, scatter them on the still breeze that barely stirred the clouds above.

Robson tore his eyes from the words he couldn’t read and scanned the grey-black yet again, but there was nothing to see. Black sky showed through sheets of cloud, and white stars through that, but nothing moved. Grey hills rolled away to the south and a sea of mud stretched out before him, but nothing moved. Not a man or a beast or a light or a sound in that terrible, terrible darkness.

He knew that somewhere in that dark, a thousand rifles lay ready to be taken up and bring the starlight to this Earth. A thousand pairs of boots waited to be called to march forward, into the open night, and bring it to life. A thousand eyes, or maybe just two, watched this wasteland and waited for the call to arms, where drowned memories and empty, unlooked-for promises could finally be forgotten in clashes of fire and lead.

Maybe it was just him, he pondered. Maybe he alone was waiting for that moment; others had already had their honour satisfied. Certainly Smith and Johnson had seen battle, even Anders, the cook, bore scars along his cheek that twitched and narrated a history of battle. ‘The Sudan’, he would say, ‘when I was in the Sudan…’

Yes. All of them were heroes but him, and even now, Smith was crawling once more into the valleys of death with his very own Light Brigade, men different from Robson only in that they had been chosen while he was left aside. Did they not trust him? Had he not yet proved himself? How could he, when all the duty he was given was to watch, and wait, and wonder.

***

Just yards from the trench now, and once again, the words were building to a crescendo in Smith’s head. The dirt was not dirt but a brown river, streaked with red, frozen with the weight of untold dead. The moonlight was not simply silver but beams of day pouring down, casting shadows on this darkening ground, where men and ghosts must surely drown. The wire he eased himself under was a million barbs of purest spite, murderers in the still of the night.

He shook his head; this was no good. The poetry could wait. He had a job to do. The others drew closer around him, and on his signal, moved forward again, with more intent than before. In Johnson’s eyes, the moonlight betrayed a pallid hunger for revenge and death that would only be sated if everything went wrong. They would go in, silent and deadly, and get out with a prisoner, leaving no trace. Ghosts in the night.

Smith peered over the edge of the trench, drawing his rifle up beside him, and detached the bayonet, readying it like a knife. He lodged the rifle against a fallen sandbag; in the confines of the trench it would only slow him down. He gave the next signal, and as one, they moved up and over the trench’s narrow walls, sliding down in an avalanche of dirt and wood. Carefully as he could, he stifled the clattering planks, and got to his feet. Ten minutes, and they would be gone.

A pale face come round the corner,

Aghast with fear, agape with wonder,

And screaming with that final breath as-

Everything went wrong.

***

The night came to life, a single flash and a million echoes of that flash, and fire rising up in bursts from the distance. Screams began to cascade down, friend and foe indistinguishable in the chaos, united only in pain and suffering. And with every scream and rifle’s flash, someone was made a hero, in death or victory immortalised.

Everyone except him.

***

Author's Notes: 

- As noted in this post's introduction, this chapter posed something of a dilemma in direction in that it was my first chance to really depict Robson 'on the front' as it were, but at the same time, there is still a lot unresolved from the last chapter to feature Smith and Johnson. While the latter issues are only really hinted at in this piece, I wanted to make sure they were still there. Both threads of the story will be developed more, and hopefully brought together. 

I'm not yet at a point where I want Robson and Smith to be directly interacting, but at the same time, they both needed to feature in this story to exacerbate the difference between them. I'd already done that a bit in 'Shellshock' (chronologically after this piece) but by including the two perspectives on this same event, it threw up some interesting contrasts that almost wrote themselves. To Smith, the war is starting to become unimportant; the only thing he is fighting for is to save lives, it's no longer about flags and nations. Robson, on the other hand, is eager to be a part of the war but can't be for reasons that will become apparent later on. For him, the promise of glory is elusive, for Smith it has been proven to be a lie (in his first appearance, 'When the Clock Strikes Ten', Smith is not unlike the idealistic Robson seen here). 

- Robson himself is a very interesting character to write, because there's so much contrast within him. He doesn't want to die, but longs for the chance to prove he can survive. He's pining after a woman who doesn't love him, while mocking a woman who feels that way about him (See 'The Making of the Man if you've lost track of what I'm on about). He's bored with the lack of action, but totally unprepared when it does come.  So he is a fascinating character, although not a 'good' one; he holds double standards, longs for bloodshed but only to pursue innocent childhood dreams, and as such, he makes a very nice counterpoint for Smith's principles and sense of 'rightness'. I look forward to playing with that further down the line. 

- Again, there's the lexical difference between Smith and Robson; Smith describes things, Robson narrates them. There's some overlap, in an attempt to almost connect the two characters (but not quite), but Smith is certainly the more passive of the two, Robson the more active. In this piece, that contrasts a lot with the roles they find themselves in.  

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment. All the chapters I mentioned above can be found in the Ongoing Works tab in narrative order. 

The Making of the Man

Today, I have another piece of the First World War series, and it's an interesting reasons. In the larger narrative, it's the first introduction of a character that will feature heavily later on, and much like Smith's first and last chapter, there's a lot of symmetry with his own end.

The Making of the Man

Five years old, and summer, and the children are playing, their whooping calls and laughs grating against Robson’s ears as he stands apart from the crowd. He would never be one of them, free to cavort and caper across the green fields, and to cheer in the warm air. How could he hoot and be merry with those words in the back of his head? Father isn’t coming home. He could never smile with them, and they hated him for it.

Older now, and in a darker place, and a fist slamming into his gut. He doubles over and splutters red on the cobbles, and does nothing to stop the hands that begin to rifle through his pockets. He has nothing to take anyway, but that won’t stop them.  This isn’t about money, it’s about who he is, and what he isn’t, and he isn’t one of them. He’s a target, nothing more, and it’s all he can do to hide the tears as the fists come down again and again and again.

She presses the soaked cloth to his face, trying to wipe away the worst of the blood, but it’s no good. The split lip has turned his chin red, and each cheek is an angry welt, scars from a battle he has already lost and will lose again. There will be no hiding this time, only mocking apathy and worse scorn. He looks up, into her diamond blue eyes, and she smiles somehow. With him here bleeding and sore, she actually smiles as she takes his hand.

“A soldier,” she laughs. ”A hero.”

Everything stops hurting.

“Smile.” Comes the command, and Robson forces his face into something like a grin, hand tightly gripping hers, perhaps too tightly. He doesn’t want this moment to end; he wants more than the photograph to be frozen in time. He could stay here forever. All too soon, the flash comes, and she steps away slightly, leaving his smile to fade with the receding glare on his retinas.

e could stahe here foreer.

Older still, lost in the smog of London streets, another day at the factory stretching out endlessly before him. Footstep by lethargic footstep he treads the cobbles, through the fog and bustling crowds, no one sight lingering for more than a second. An old beggar becomes a drunken youth that falls away and transforms again into a smart, clean-shaven soldier smiling giddily at the world. The figured seems to transfix Robson, a picture of another life, his father’s life; adventure and glory awaits this man, worth the risk. This, Robson decides, is real freedom.

Later, and the day has ebbed away, second by second. He lifts the tankard to his lips and drowns his exhaustion in the foaming beer, the world distorted by the emptying glass, blurring shapes becoming solid once more. And those shapes, khaki and red and diamond blue, entwined in the smoky corner of the bar. She stands there, laughing, with a soldier and a hero and not him. Someone tugs at Robson’s sleeve, waving a formless limb at the door and escape. He doesn’t even think twice as he takes the hand of the girl he never loved and slips into the oblivion of her arms.

War. Britain is at war, and every face in those serried ranks of khaki marching off reminded him of that night where he lost everything to a faceless soldier. He looks away as the crowd passes, as women throw themselves towards the green-brown line and are thrown back, a cascade of flowers their parting gesture. Wherever these men are going, they leave as heroes, and the men they leave behind are cowards. No one will give him a second glance now. There is nothing left for him here.

“Name?” says the officer, and Robson stammers something unintelligible, trying not to wither under his stare. “Name?”

“Robson. Ian Robson.” He says again, clearer this time, and the officer nods. Robson wrings his hands as the next question comes, the one that will decide his future. 

“Age?”

Sixteen.

“Eighteen.” He says.

“Very good.” The officer frowns, but hands him the papers. What is that in his face? Anger at being lied to? Jealousy that Robson has the courage to fight while he sits here doling out forms? No, it’s pity, but he doesn’t know why. He had lied, and the officer knows it, but what did it matter now? Robson was going to war… 

***

Author's Notes: 

- The style for this piece is a very different one to a lot of this series, in several ways. First of all, it is written in a very 'instant' manner, and by that, I mean that it should hopefully be a bombardment of moments, an entire life on the page. 

- The other decision I made here was to narrate it in the present tense. I think this adds to the immediacy of the various scenes, and to the idea that everything is happening in a flash, as opposed to having already been and gone. I also wanted a direct contrast with Smith's sections- where Smith is slow and often poetic in his descriptions, Robson is very much more sudden in his way of looking at the world. If it doesn't 'happen', he loses interest, hence why this piece is so jumpy. 

- This piece also represents the start of Part 2 of the series, set in 1915, and should both contrast with the last chapter of Part 1 and lead nicely into the next few chapters. 

- As a final note, I've edited Robson's first-written last-chronologically piece, Back To Life, to better reflect the themes and ideas that came to me in forming the character here. Check it out here. 

That's all for today. As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to comment. 

A New Dawn?

Today's piece is another instalment of the ongoing World War One series, The Poet's War, and follows on directly from the previous piece. As usual, newcomers can check where it fits in relation to the other pieces on the Ongoing Works page, and notes are below.

A New Dawn?

14^th November 1914

Stephens’ face stared blankly back at nothingness as they lowered him silently into the shallow grave, in truth little more than one of the less-flooded shell holes that littered what was left of the trench amidst the craters, shattered structures and littered detritus of battle. The eyes, unmoving and still, were what captivated Smith the most, some morbid fascination preventing him from looking away. The rest of Stephens’ face was a torn and bloody mess, ripped ragged by a single bullet, but the eyes were untouched. He could be watching a play, or a game of cricket on a summer’s afternoon with those staring, round, peaceful eyes, and they would still look the same, so real, so alive.

Alive in what Smith was rapidly beginning to accept was a dead and dying world. Too many corpses lay unrecovered in the chaotic ruins of what had once been a trench, too many sights hinted almost casually at the scale of the death surrounding them. Across that wasteland, nothing moved, nothing grew, and nothing lived.

Through the smoke that still hung over the vacated battlefield, the odd flare or cry would go up, the searchers and survivors locked in an ever-shorter game of Hide-And-Seek, counting the seconds, not until they were found, but until that was immaterial. A single tear rolled gently down his cheek, a gesture that seemed altogether too insignificant for the sheer hell he found himself in.

Just as suddenly as the world had burst into vivid live as he had approached the front lines, every sight and sound and smell a fusillade of words and lines, falling together and gone in seconds, it had become quite dead equally quickly. Somewhere in the last four blood-soaked days, the illusion had been shattered, the reality had become a nightmare, and what had once seemed a wide open world had transformed in an instant into something confined, trapped and claustrophobic. 

He couldn’t yet tell entirely when the sudden transformation had occurred, only that it had. Maybe when Stephens’ face, that same face he now looked down at, had been split red by the first shot fired in anger. Maybe it was when the grey lines had moved across the grey field, puppets jerking in haphazard motion ever closer. Maybe it was when that grey met his khaki and both were made red, bayonets plunging in riflelight. Or maybe, it was when he had stopped after days of alert readiness and near-constant bloodshed, and finally slept, as dead to the world as the corpses around him. Maybe that new dawn was what had finally tipped him headlong into this nightmare.

“We should say something. You should, sir.” Johnson muttered, the first words Smith had heard him offer since the fighting had stopped. There was something new in his voice, but also something gone, as if scorn had been relieved by a shattered pride. He had not seen much of Johnson in the battle, but the giant man seemed somewhat diminished by the ordeal, stooped over this shallow grave and looking as solemn as if it were his own opened up before him.

“Aye.” Smith began, and then paused as the words caught in his throat, which seemed to tighten around them and force them back, intent on preserving the silence. He tried again. “Our Father, who art… who art…” He could not bring himself to say Heaven in this complete hell. “Ah, bugger it. Goodbye, Stephens. Goodbye, little Lenny Stephens. Goodbye.”

Smith pressed the shovel into Johnson’s reluctant hands and turned away without another word, not meeting the eyes that were deader than those of the corpse in the shallow pit. Some detached fragment of his mind wondered what his own would reveal should he dare to look. Ghosts in firelight of fallen men? Empty, dark spaces, a door to the soul that had just departed? The same fixed stare that he couldn’t shake from his mind?

With every step away from the open grace, the wet ground underfoot seemed more reluctant to let him leave, grasping and clinging at his boots.  Smith was tempted to let it keep him. Somehow, what meagre ceremony had been held did no justice to their fallen friend; he deserved something more. But then, others were still out there in the wasteland and the gunsmoke mist, dead and dying and so alone. He should be grateful they were able to give Stephens a send-off at all.

After an age, another tear fell, and this time it was one among many, a single tear for a dead friend amidst a torrent for nameless others. Through blurred eyes he looked back at the grave. Johnson had planted a makeshift cross of charred timber, and fallen to his knees before it, occasionally wracked by silent sobs. Smith left him to his grief; he would at least allow the man some dignity as he diminished.

Somehow, Smith was certain it was over for now. Over for Christmas. Whether it was the first hints of snow in the air, or the first silence of the relentless guns, or the complete lack of anything left to fight for he did not know, but he knew another attack would not come, at least until the new year. A winter, then, to grieve for the fallen and rebuild the trenches that would be their only monument, and welcome with open arms and forced smiles the men that would doubtless be sent to replace them.

And then what? They could do it all again when the winter ceased, or even before if they chose, and for what? For the foreign soil that clung to his boots, unremarkable, worthless, but urging him to stay with every step away? For the flag that hung in tatters over a burned-down ruin where so many men had already given their lives? For the hope that maybe, one day, far away, some other generation would not have to face the same?

Without knowing how it got there, Smith found the diary in his hand, miraculously unscathed despite the fighting, and opened it to a fresh page, letting the blood and mud on his hands stain the crisp whiteness; there was no purity here. Perched on an overturned barrel, pen in hand, he began to try and put some meaning to all of this madness. For minutes, maybe hours, nothing.  

When, at last, the words came, there were only two. It was enough.

                         

What Now?  

***

Author's Notes: 

- The first thing I had in mind with this piece was to really bring to the fore something that has been a constant, if subtle, feature of this series from its inception, namely that what I really intend to focus on is not the actual fighting of the war but the myriad effect that it has on the men who took part. While it's tempting to write an out-and-out battle scene (and one may well be forthcoming further along), I think in this particular context, it's better to only hint at the real fighting rather than present it directly. 

-The other advantage of this is that it leaves the exact reality to the imagination, which no doubt does a far better job of presenting the sheer insanity and hell of the fighting than words could ever hope to. 

- This piece possibly the first one which really functions better as part of the narrative than as a standalone piece. Not only does it herald a complete change in both Smith and Johnson and their perceptions of the war, but it also occupies the position of a turning point in the tale as a whole. It is only now that the promise of being  'home for Christmas' (hinted at towards the end of the piece) becomes an impossibility and the true nature of the war is revealed. This will also contrast nicely with the introduction of a new character to present 'part 2' of the story, but that'll have to wait for now. 

That's all. As ever, thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment, and I hope you enjoyed the piece. 

Words for the Living, Words for the Dead

Time for another piece of fiction, and another piece in the ongoing First World War serial. To see where this one slots into the narrative, see here. From now on, the works in this series will be broadly in narrative order as I've just about managed to fit it all together. Without further ado:

Words for the Living, Words for the Dead

10^th November 1914

At last the marching days have ended,

And step by step we reach this place,

The end of one world

The start of the next.

Tonight, assembled, think on our sins,

For tomorrow at dawn a new war begins.

Smith put the pen aside, and watched the ink dry, soaking into the paper, drowning its white, unmarked youth in blackened wetness, before that too faded away leaving only an echo. It was the fifth entry in as many days, and he knew now that the sharp lines would be visible through the thick paper, shadows and ghosts on the next page. The days were quite literally blurring into one, an endless slog of

Marching, marching, step by step, a war to fight and then forget.

Ever since his encounter with the dead man, that unnamed and unforgettable walking corpse, with his parting gift, nothing more than a scrap of paper, the world he now existed in had seemed so much more real and vivid to Smith. New words and lines of verse teemed in his head, entering unbidden and departing without warning, an endless cycle of forgetting and remembering.

By keeping the words alive, he kept his memory alive. By keeping his memory alive, he kept the dead alive.

 The light flickered, and already Smith was familiar enough with the dugout to realise who had moved and where. There wasn’t much to notice, just a few bunks in the far wall, the short passage along to the kitchen, and only varying shades of brown dirt, wood and canvas to set the shapes apart.

“Evening, Johnson.” He said without looking up from the paper, still mesmerised with the drying ink. The shadow came closer and darkened the desk.

“Oi, Stephens, get your arse on duty.” The new arrival called down the tunnel, and almost immediately, the small man scurried out, the emergence of his pale, bare face instantly reminding Smith of a rat, poking its head out into the daylight and looking immediately guilty. Stephens’ protruding nose and wide eyes did little to help the impression.

Stephens darted quickly from the dugout and out into the sunset, and flitted back in just as fast to grab his rifle. It was a schoolboy error, and Smith instantly felt the urge to admonish him for it, before remembering that Stephens was, in fact, still a schoolboy, barely sixteen.

Too young to fight, too young to die

In evening’s light he lives his lie.

Before he could stop himself, Smith had committed the words to the page, separate from his earlier thoughts. Johnson gave a disapproving snort, and at last, Smith looked up at him.

“Still playing around with that bloody poetry, then, Smithy?” Almost as an afterthought, he added “Evening.”

“I am indeed, Johnson, and I’ll continue to do so until the Boche decide to make things a little more interesting for us. Christ knows we all need something to keep us sane around here.”

“Whatever you say. Anything good?” Johnson peered over his shoulder, his glare seeming to scrutinise every line and dot on the paper, as if expecting something revelatory to be hidden within the depths of black on white. Smith was not quite sorry to disappoint him. A dirt-encrusted hand viciously seized the page and turned it over, to where an altogether different verse was inscribed.

Johnson’s eyes scanned the page, taking in every word, and Smith could do nothing but brace himself for the forthcoming scorn. When Johnson began his inevitable recital, it was in a voice laden with as much snobbish mocking as he could muster, and the sheer contempt for the art was all but tangible. 

“The wet grey mud and red-stained dead”

And every shade between

Are good men dying, mothers crying

For what their sons have seen

When they followed colours flying

To distant shores where blue turned green

Turned red.”

His eyes returned to Smith. “Bloody depressing is all I can say. Don’t you lot ever write anything cheerful? How’re you staying sane with this tragic rot in your head?”

Barely. Smith wanted to reply, but restrained himself, instead simply closing the book and tucking in under his arm, making for the exit before Johnson could make another mocking comment. The temptation to pull rank and assign Johnson all manner of unpleasant duties nagged at the back of his mind, but he resisted it; better to be the butt of a few jokes than make enemies out of men he would too- soon be relying on in battle.

Smith stepped into the trench just as the last sunlight reached an incandescent barrage over the piled silhouettes of sandbags, flames lapping at mounds of bodies. The ground underfoot was slick with water that ran too red in places, lifeblood draining away into some worse hell. What had once been an effective fortification was now a grim mockery of order and solidity.

Men passed, ashen-faced, nodding silent greetings to absent friends. Slowly, a bird made its way across the pale dome above them, the only living thing free to leave this endless stalemate. Smith watched it fade with a ghost of a smile still amazed by how easily the poetic descriptions came to him. Seized by some sudden fixation with the not-quite-silence, he stepped back from the path and closed his eyes.

The sounds that made it through the noiseless air were just as alive and vivid. A whistle sounding from across the undulating void was a summons to battle, and heads looked up in alert expectation.  Somewhere, a sentry gave a call in some other tongue from half a world away, the aggressive syllables reaching out into the stillness. Closers, now, a more familiar voice raised in furtive alarm, a rat calling to its horde.

A rat.

Stephens.

Instantly, Smith was running, snaring a discarded rifle from somewhere he didn’t look, feet pounding across mud that sought to cling and drag him down into its murky depths. Frantic moments later, he reached the sentry.

The sentry, slumped against the wall, mouth open in a wordless scream, filling with still-pouring blood from an empty, red wound, hand outstretched; a final warning to the doomed. Smith prized his gaze away and up onto the sea of mud.

The sea of mud, across which moved grim marionettes, stumbling through the twilight, flashes of light and pinpricks of sound louder than any cannon, a creeping wall of death. Smith’s thoughts stopped, dead as the sentry beside him.

There were no words for this.

***

Author's Notes: 

- Keen-eyed regulars (if you exist) will notice similarities between this piece and No Man's Land, most notably the frequent intermixing of poetry into the prose. This is quite deliberate, and if anything, this piece adds context to that, explaining the genesis of Smith's rather idiosyncratic thought process. It's also just an excuse to indulge in some poetry. 

That's it for today. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment.

First Impressions

First of all, apologies for the lapse into inactivity that this blog has suffered over the last couple of weeks; I have found myself with too little time to really write or post anything. That said, I've got a few ideas and new bits and pieces to post now, so time-permitting there will be more coming over the next few weeks.

For today's piece, a direct follow-up to my last World War One piece, although very much a contrast to it. Enjoy:

First Impressions

4^th November 1914        

The journey through France had been long, too long, and Smith had found that, despite day after day with nothing to do but sit, march he and think, was still unable to really understand why he was here. These rolling fields, small woods and the huge European sky showed no signs of a war being fought; everything was as tranquil as it had been back home, the landscape unscarred, the people acting just the same, the very feeling of the place no different.

On reflection, he wondered what precisely he had been expecting. Ranks of soldiers rallied around a flag, fluttering in the French breeze? Fortifications manned by grizzled veterans already tired of the war?  Fields and fields of bloody corpses? It didn’t matter, those sights that haunted his dreams. They weren’t real.

The mud underfoot was different, somehow wetter than that of home, and the air was cleaner, at least on this remote road to nowhere. The sky, when not clouded, was bluer, the grass greener, every colour more vibrant and alive. It would have been ironic, if not for the grim and ever-approaching reality. He might not be there yet, but he was marching to a war. That was not something easily forgotten.

***

On the ninth day, the column came across the first signs of what they were moving inexorably towards. They had reached a small town scarcely twenty miles west of the front, and while the officers organised transport for the next leg of the journey, the men were given two hours’ rest. Smith had initially tried to maintain some kind of order, but it was hopeless. After ten minutes of barking whatever orders he could, he relented, and simply hoped the troops would not get too inebriated.

He eventually found a quiet spot, in the corner of the square, and unwrapped his carefully-concealed diary. Finding the first crisp, white page, he paused for a moment, wondering exactly what was worth noting. He hadn’t paid attention to the name of the town, nor the last, and no one really knew where he was going next. The weather had been unremarkable, if a little windy, and there had been nothing to do but march and halt. And that, he reflected, did not make compelling reading.

Ten long, slow minutes passed as the nib of his pen hovered over the page, searching for something noteworthy, and around him, Smith could feel a change in the atmosphere. A quiet had descended, the bustling market slowed and fell still, and all eyes turned to the eastward road. Smith stood, pressing through the crowd, and craned his neck for a better view the impending scene.

The unearthly quiet became even more silent, to the point at which sound seemed almost impossible. A pin dropping would be a gunshot. A sharply-drawn breath would shatter the world around him. Nothing moved.

Eventually, a green blur appeared at the head of the road, and instantly, Smith understood. He had been surrounded by nothing but that green for a month. The troops were withdrawing, possibly even the very troops his men were supposed to be relieving. Had they been too slow? Was this a retreat, or just a routine operation? Who were these men?

As the lines of khaki approached, these thoughts fell dead, replaced instantly by a morbid curiosity, a paradox of vision. At once, he wanted nothing more than to see everything he could, and to turn away. Dreams died as they drew nearer; the reality was becoming all-too-clear.

Eyes, unseeing, on staring faces. Gashes, still bleeding, sewn with cord and wire. Limbs flailing in a bizarre parody of motion. Steps, marching but out of time, one after another after another after another. These were not men, but ghosts.

Every detail was sharp in the midday sun; the men appeared to draw in the light, absorb it, darken it. Smith made out names, numbers, insignia and decorations, pointless shapes that meant nothing. He could see the bloody stubble clinging to the chin of a man too young to shave, and the limp of an old soldier, too old to fight. He could see a hand with a finger missing, the pattern tapped by its remaining companions somehow lacking, incorporeal. He could see the twitch at the corner of an eye, replaying the same look of utter horror again and again and again.

Everything here was so real and yet so distant; the silent crowd seemed to vanish, the buildings became simple shapes, every focus was on these poor shells of men, marching step by step to some other place, be it a haven, a sanctuary, or just another hell. At the head of the column, a bugler, one arm hanging dead and useless by his side, pressed his instrument to his lips and blew, but there was no sound. Something within the man was broken, unable to bring forth a sound.

One figure, ghostlier than the rest, with a blood-flecked face and madman’s eyes, suddenly leapt from the column. He fell to his knees, and then, with effort enough to move the world, stood shakily, and began staggering towards the crowd. His comrades, too tired, broken and confused to care, just kept walking ever onwards.

Smith’s eyes locked with this mad spectre’s, and the stumbling man started to claw his way through the crowd, who parted before him. Inch by inch, the ghost lurched and then crawled towards Smith. He was unable to move, transfixed as this monster of man, this blood-coughing, scrabbling corpse moved closer and closer.

He fell at Smith’s feet, another cough spraying blood, too red, too real, across his shoes, mingling with the mud. A hand closed around his leg, the fingers suddenly gripping too tight. Too real. Smith knelt down to this obviously dying man, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Their eyes met again, so close now, and Smith could finally understand this man. What he’d seen, what he’d done, where he’d been suddenly became clear; a portrait in a stare that he knew he would never forget. The grip on his ankle released, and the man fell suddenly limp, lying down in the mud at the roadside and fumbling for something at his breast pocket. Gently, Smith reached down and undid the button, and the contorted hand closed around something inside, pulling it out.

A simple pocketwatch, quite unadorned, brass somehow untarnished amidst the mud and blood a chaos. The soldier pressed it into Smith’s hand, gibbering madly but making no sound. Smith took it, and the dying man reached again for his pocket. This time, there was no grip, and Smith moved his hand aside, his own feeling in the pocket for whatever the soldier wanted. His hand closed around a scrunched ball of paper, which he withdrew. Immediately, the man started nodding, and Smith pocketed the paper. There was nothing to do now but wait.

***

It took two hours for the unknown soldier to finally die, and Smith remained with him the whole time, listening to the insane mutterings and watching his life slowly ebb away. Eventually, the crowd had parted and the troops moved away, and the two of them were left alone, a scene from a battlefield in the town square, a scene he could never forget.

Finally, Smith gathered the courage to unfold the paper the dead man had been so intent on handing over to him, and found on it only a few words, shakily scrawled on the crumpled page. A dead man’s last words. At last, he had found something to write in the pristine diary, marring it forever, its white innocence annihilated at the stroke of a pen. The watch ticked on as he painstakingly copied out each word, ink draining slowly out from the nib, life leaving an old soldier too young to die.

When all is burnt and all is dead

When all the world is blood-stained red,

When all our wars come to an end

Then will Death be called our friend.

***

Author's Notes: 

- Much like my last piece, there is a strong emphasise on body language in this one, although this time it was more a quirk of the context and content rather than a deliberately used device. I felt the 'silence' was important to this piece, as both Smith and the reader are held in a a grim illusion that direct speech would shatter. A similar effect can be seen in my piece Countdown, where speech is used in exactly that matter, to shatter the relative calm of the moment. 

- This piece also introduces a lot of motifs that have and will feature heavily in the continuing narrative, such as the watch, the use of poetry, the ideas of words being linked so closely with memory. As such, it lends context to a lot later pieces that I've already posted, or sets up these themes and idea for those reading in order. 

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment. 

When The Clock Strikes Ten

As promised yesterday, here is another instalment in my ongoing First World War series (working title: The Poet's War). This one really occupies the position of either a prequel or first chapter, for reasons that should be obvious. That said, anyone who has seen the chronologically 'later' pieces will also get something from this, and it becomes a reflection rather than an introduction. The rest of the pieces, for those who haven't seen them, can be found by clicking the 'Ongoing Works' tab at the top of this page.

When the Clock Strikes Ten

King’s Cross Station, 18th August 1914

Anthony’s gaze was fixed on his boots, reflected eyes in the polished black leather staring back at him, a portrait of the man he had become. Clean-shaven chin, bushy but neat moustache, the officers’ cap balanced perfectly straight on his short-cropped hair. His khaki collar was pristinely sharp, ironed only hours before, his brass buttons polished to perfection. Every inch an officer of the British army.

The steam whistle snapped him out of the reverie, and he looked up at the great clock. Five minutes.

All along the platform, families jostled for position, mothers hiding tears, fathers shaking hands, young girls flinging flowers at the departing youth. Line after line of khaki made its way onto the train, a green-brown exodus for who-knew-where.

In the crowd, he made out his own parents, standing twenty feet to his right. In the middle of the throng, they were somehow detached, an island standing firm in the chaos. A last memory of home. For a second, he was about to take a step in their direction, and another and another, but he knew it was impossible. Improper. The men behind him were waiting for his lead; he couldn’t desert them now. His goodbyes were already said.

Behind him, the troops muttered to themselves, some breaking ranks to wish last goodbyes, others shedding silent tears. I’ll be back soon, mum. He heard one say, Back for Christmas, eh? He shook his head. The jingoism would be no good in the face of rifle fire and artillery. There was a good chance none of them would be coming back at all.

His eyes searched the crowd, eyes not lingering on any one face to see the torment there. Back to his men. Up to the clock. Down into the grieving mass. Back to the clock. Impossibly, he could hear the mechanism working. Tick tock. Tick tock. Counting down. Three minutes.

He took a step, and as one the platoon formed behind him, snapping to attention and marching forward. He led them across the platform, step by step, and onto the waiting train, greeted in silence by a grey-faced conductor.  Anthony could tell he was an old soldier, with his upright stance and alert eyes, and a stare that had seen too much. He gave a quick nod as he boarded the carriage, a flash of understanding between generations.

Still silent, he found a seat and sank into it, pretences abandoned out of the public eye. It was five hours to Dover, given the extra stops, and with any luck he could get some sleep between now and then. The noise around him was loud, but somehow soothing. He was not as alone as he had feared he might be. Comrades in arms were his family now.

Tick tock. Tick tock. The unheard clock moved on, and he caught it just as the larger hand moved, in that moment where a second takes an age. 09:59. One minute.

Back on the platform, he could see his father fighting through the crowd, decorum and sense thrown aside. His mother trailed behind, so fragile, her tears unhidden. Had the train not started moving at that moment, he imagined her face would be pressed against the glass, imploring him to come home. Too late, he thought, as the wheels began to grind along the tracks, carrying him away.

Tick tock. Away from home. Away from everyone he knew. Away from the green fields and little rivers and the apple tree at the bottom of the garden.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Towards a new world. Towards a new life. Towards fire and blood and mud and slaughter.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Stop.

In one moment, reality was clearer than ever, a flash of frozen lightning that made everything so very very real. In one moment, he wanted to claw open the window and jump from the train and to curl in a ball and cry and to scream and scream and scream and-

The cacophony burst forth at 10 o’clock precisely, as the train whistled its white noise when the deep clock bell tolled and the wheels began to screech and Corporal Antony Smith’s thoughts were drowned in a torrent of blasting sound. There was no need to think now. No need to scream. No need to do anything but wait. 

*** 

Author's Notes: 

- For those who have followed this story from its inception, this piece will feel familiar. The very first piece in the series featured a countdown to going 'over the top', into the unknown, and that's something I've attempted to recreate here. I think that, in the context of a longer work, it adds a nice sense of reflection, the first chapter mirroring the last. What that means is up to you, but I think it works nicely. 

- Similarly, the aforementioned piece made a lot of use of body language and positioning in place of speech, and again this is a direct mirror to that, right down to some exact movement being copied.  

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment. 

Shellshock

Time for another bit of writing, but before that, just a quick note about a new feature on this blog. You can now find a tab titled 'Ongoing Works' at the top of the page, which has a list of all the serial work I've posted on here, in narrative order. It should save you having to trawl through posts to find previous works if you want to revisit it, and also help keep things in order.

Now for the main event, another entry into my ongoing First World War series. Without further ado...

Shellshock

In the near silence, Robson was almost calm. It was the quietest quiet he could remember since England, and for once, Smith wasn’t barking orders. It wasn’t that he disliked the corporal, but he wasn’t overly fond of him, either. Something about the man seemed to be shouting at any moment, always shouting. Orders.

It could be worse, he imagined, and Smith hardly overworked his men, but he was simply so different, somehow, from this place. As much as he had tried to drum into Robson that class didn’t matter in their unit, that he wouldn’t be treated any differently just because he ‘wasn’t landed’, it still seemed to make its presence felt. Smith’s bunk and desk were always pristinely tidy, Robson’s own bunk a mess, a place to sleep at night and store his meagre belongings in the day. Smith always took duties himself, and Robson was always last to be picked.

Class doesn’t matter? He thought bitterly. Yes it bloody well does. Why else am I the one sitting round with nothing to do while all you rich boys get the real action? Why else are you always ‘volunteering’ for whatever you can get your privileged hands on? Why else am I always on the godforsaken morning watch where NOTHING EVER HAPPENS? 

***

Smith sipped the tea, and immediately spat, subtly as he could. Cold, tasteless and somehow dry. Anders could make a better cup. Even Johnson, and he avoided the stuff like the plague. For an officer’s mess, this was appalling. His eyes flicked back up to the Major.

“So, Smithy, how’s it going with the lads down at the front, eh?” the moustached officer asked, his multiple chins beginning to wobble as he spoke. It was only the difference in rank that kept Smith from laughing to himself.

“Smith, please, if you don’t mind, sir. And there’s nothing to report. Still the same mess as last week, still underequipped, still outnumbered, and still running low on biscuits. What the men haven’t eaten, the rats have. Maybe you’d like to see for yourself?” he concluded, the hostility he was trying so hard to suppress creeping into his last words.

He knew the Major would never accept the offer, but he always made it. Every week, every meeting, he would always ask. If ever he did come down to the front, and spend a few days in the trenches, Smith couldn’t help but feel they would find several of their more pressing problems relieved. He hid a smile as he imagined the Major cramming himself into a too-small bunk, petrified of the rat that circled his feet.

“Oh, no, we couldn’t do that. Not at all proper, you see, Smithy?” Smith clenched and unclenched his fist, noting the Major’s use of the epithet. Clearly, they were both playing mind games. He was determined not to lose. “How about that new chap we sent down last week? He’s a keen one, isn’t he? Roberts, or something like that.”

“Robson, sir, and yes he is. A little too keen, if you ask me. I’ve tried to keep him off-duty, otherwise I’m afraid he might try and storm the German front himself.”

“So he’s not seen action yet?”

“No, sir, not a shell, not a bullet, not a bayonet, so long as I can help it.”

***

There was something unfamiliar in the air, Robson noted. Too high-pitched and whining to be a bird, too loud to be the wind, and too distant to be a whistling passer-by. On and on it droned, higher and higher, and then lower, lower, lower, lower-

The muddy bank behind him erupted, a spewing geyser of mud and fire and a deafening sound and a searing heat and a sudden force that threw him back against the sandbags. Blind, deaf, and winded, Robson fell to the floor, limbs suddenly shuddering in a bizarre parody of motion. His heart hammered, machinegun-fast, and the blood that pulsed beat by beat around his shaking body boiled.

Another whine-BOOM, and more dirt sprang up, further away, covering the sun. As his hearing returned, Robson heard screaming, and only after two more explosions shook the world did he realise it was his own. He still didn’t know what was happening, or why, or how he was alive or what was happening. Every inch of his body cold feel how real this was, but his brain had not yet caught up.

Slowly, as more gaping holes opened up and the screaming went on, Robson climbed to his feet, juddering hands hauling himself up on split sandbags. A searing pain in his left arm refused to subside, but it faded to a dull, shrill blaring too painful to ignore or acknowledge. It was just there.

He had been trained, he realised, to react to shelling. He had been trained to be shot at, hunkered in a muddy hole and powerless. He had been trained to storm a trench through a hail of bullets. But nothing and no one had trained him for this sheer insanity.

Step by step, with the world falling apart around him, Robson staggered down the trench, too blind to step on duckboards and wading his way through the ankle-deep mud. The only sounds were screaming explosions and exploding screams, red and white and fiery screams. There was no sky, only sharper pain on unshielded too-wide eyes, and no ground, only a shaking, shattering world tearing itself apart.

He was somewhere, and nowhere. Too real and not real enough. Yelling and silent. Loudquiet, runningwalking, deadalive, he inched along what reality he could see, no purpose other than to live. To escape. To end this madness.

After a minute day week year lifetime, he felt something give way beneath him. The ground fell away and left him suspended, for an instant, in nothingness. Something hurt and something else didn’t and he didn’t know which was which. Vision became sound became pain became thought, and he plummeted, down into the cold hot water mud below. The last thing he remembered was something gripping, snatching at his arms, one more pain in the torment.

***

“He’s coming around, sir.” Johnson whispered, and Smith looked up from the papers he wasn’t reading, at Robson’s shaking, wide-eyed shell. Not a shell, not a bullet, not a bayonet, so long as I can help it. The shame of failure was a deep wound that had constantly gnawing at him, every second since he had returned to the dugout to see Robson, gibbering and shaking in the bunk.

Robson’s eyes were too open, the blank stare of a madman. His fingers danced an insane jig against his thighs, his foot tapped out of rhythm, a bizarre, dissonant tempo. The flesh wound in his left arm, a deep gouge of frayed skin and torn muscle, was the least of his worries, already treated as best they could. It could scar, but he would live.

“W…wh…whereamI?” Robson muttered, lips barely parting, jaw trembling. “D…d…de...dead.” His mouth split, forced apart. “Deeeaaaaaaad! Deeeeeeeaaaaaaaaad!”

“No, not dead yet, lad.” Johnson replied, steadying his shaking arms. “Not dead yet.”

***

He could still hear the screaming, a distant wail that he somehow knew was still his own. The colours faded into one, the bright vista replaced with a muddy haze.  There was another noise creeping under the yells, a paler, smoother noise, and a shape face moved in the blur, lighter than the surrounding mass of brownredgreen.

Something moved, an arm, his own, and a sharp pain followed as it hit something else. His fingers were fire, flickering flames, tapping shell bursts on the wall. His breath was exploding, every shallow inhalation was shrapnel down his throat. His eyes could not close, blasted open, split sandbags spilling tears. Taste was blood and ash in his mouth.

The noises in waves rose and fell, sometimes loudquiet, sometimes quietloud. Once, the blurs turned sharp, stabbing lights in the dark, and then the soft shapes returned and he slept with open eyes. Slept and dreamed and prayed, and in the brief respite between nightmares, he thought he understood.  

***

Author's Notes: 

- This piece was written with no brief other than the initial concept, but it does revisit some themes of earlier posts. I've made heavy use of the sensory bombardment that is synaesthesia in this piece, in an altogether more active way than the last time it featured heavily. 

- I've played with language a lot here, blending words and in places throwing punctuation and syntax aside. This is intentional, to add to the sense of sheer confusion I want to convey. 

- In terms of structure, I'm not entirely sure whether this piece is better with or without the interludes featuring Smith. On one hand, it breaks up the three phases of the main narrative nicely and also ties it in with the ongoing story, and also foreshadows the conclusion and adds context. However, I feel the piece may have ended up too longer and cumbersome, and would work just as well without it. As part of an ongoing narrative, I'll certainly keep it, but I have a feeling it may detract from the individual impact of this piece. 

That's all for today, I have another WW1 piece to post tomorrow that, in a way, brings an element of this story full circle. There's plenty more to come, though. 

Duty

For the first time in a while, I've written something without any kind of brief, as I'm still hooked into the story of Corporal Smith's journey across the Western front to the Somme. To my mind, this chapter pre-dates the other World War One work I've written, all of which can be found here. I think it speaks for itself, so I'll leave the introduction here and get to the story. As always, notes below:

Duty

The cell was a cold grey, the evening light casting long shadows of the bars that stood between the condemned and their final sunset. Too high to reach or see out of, all one could do was stare at that fading glimmer. The floor of the cell was a hard concrete, the grey stained by all manner of horrors. In the far corner, there was a puddle of still-drying blood, the stench of which filled the room; a final reminder of why he was here.

Smith’s shoes made a sharp click-clack, click-clack, shattering the silence and making every step a gunshot, echoing off the white walls, a never-ending cascade of noise. From somewhere nearby, he heard a voice raised in pitiful cries. The screeching and clicking folded together, the entirety of this place summed up in a few simple sounds. Madness, suddenness, silence. Even when Smith stood still, the noise circled round and round in his head.

Searching for something, anything to take his mind off the cacophony, he found his gaze irresistibly drawn to the deranged scrawlings that littered the wall. Some were indecipherable, some other language real or imagined, some were purely illegible, the tortured minds that produced them unable to remain sane long enough to form words. But a few were all too real, a name here, a prayer there, a date and a place and another date and here; the only testament these men would have, their own eulogy spilled across the walls, written in chipped plaster or red blood.

“Ah, you’ve arrived early, Smith.” Smith whirled, the voice that knifed through the silent echo chilling him to the bone, the upbeat tone at odds with the severity of its surrounding. Smith regained his composure without missing a beat, saluting crisply. “Well then, let’s not waste any time. I’m afraid we’re a little short of staff here, so you’ll be guarding the prisoner tonight, if you wouldn’t mind. No chance of escape, of course, but they tend to go a bit mad on the last night. Understandable, I suppose.”

Smith let the sergeant continue the monologue, feeling his fists clench and something in his stomach squirm. Everything about this man was jarring with this place; he was smartly dressed amidst the untidy scribbling, he stood straight where so many were broken, his voice rose crisply over the screaming from the other cells. After some time, the speech ended, and Smith was shown to the door of the cell, where he began the long, slow wait. 

***

It was midnight where the sobbing started. The walls muffled the sounds just enough that Smith could still hear them, each wracking moan and wordless cry came to him, as if from far away. Occasionally, he could decipher whole words. Home. Mother. Die. Why. Names broke through to him, meaning nothing, only echoes of people he never knew.

After an hour or maybe two, in which there had been no peace, the noise finally stopped, the silence just as haunting. There was a dim shuffling from inside the cell, and Smith knew it was coming closer. He felt the inevitable knock on the wall behind him, and moments later, the voice.

“Come on. I know ye’re there. Wouldn’t leave me wit’out a guard, would they? Just talk to me. Just talk.”

Smith was paralysed, unable even to breath. If he remained still, silent, then perhaps the prisoner would give up. Perhaps he would forget who he was calling out to, or slink back into the silence, and Smith could go back to pretending he didn’t know why he was here.

“Just talk.” Came the voice again, hollow and cutting, reaching down to the very fibre of Smith’s being. How could he ignore a dying man’s wish? Was he that inhuman? He knew it was stupid; in six hours he would be killing this man. But somehow, he just couldn’t ignore him. He couldn’t speak, either.

“D’ya know why I’m in ‘ere?” the walls whispered to him. He gave no answer, but the prisoner somehow knew he was curious. “Disobeyed orders, didn’t I? Mad ‘McLellan, not doin’ as ‘e’s told. Mad, mad McLellan.” The voice gave way to a high-pitched laugh, which seemed to tear out Smith’s insides and rearrange them in a grim parody of a human. Every word, every syllable, and both of them became closer to being animals.

“Told ‘em their war was bloody stupid, din’t I? Wouldn’t go over, would I? And they called me a coward. Hahhahahaha! Me, a bloody coward! And yet ‘ere I am, facin’ death with no way out. So when you’re out there, tomorrow mornin’, linen’ up yer shot, just ask yerself: Who’s the bloody coward now? Who, eh? Who?”

The last word was screamed out, shattering whatever was left of Smith’s resolve. The madman knew his piece was done, and slunk back to the silence, his scream becoming a mutter as the night wore on. Mad McLellan’s words went marching through his head for hours, and eventually, only one thought remained.

Mad, mad McLellan, the man who wouldn’t fight, was the only sane man he’d seen since London.

***

The morning light was cold and harsh, the rain becoming ice and making the footing treacherous. Smith picked up the rifle and marched into the courtyard, where McLellan stood upright, tied to the wooden pole in front of the stained grey walls. Smith didn’t need to see through the bag to know he’d be grinning, knowing that he had the last laugh over his executioners, who now formed a line and stood ready. Smith noted with some sickness that, apart from his own, no hand trembled on the rifle. These men were executioners, cold and ruthless.

“Firing squad. Ready.”

Rifles came to shoulders, Smith moving as one with the rest of the men, doing his best to do anything but think. It was no good.

“Aim.”

The air was silent, their breaths wisps of cloud taken on the wind, the gentle breeze ruffling the king’s flag that Smith could not take his eyes off. The seasoned executioners adjusted their aim, turning this brutal business to an art form. Smith’s own weapon wavered, pulled left and right by the burning desire to miss. McLellan stood a little straighter, defiance incarnate.

Who’s the coward now?

“Fire.”

***

Author's notes: 

- This piece is based on a very real place and setting; on my visits to Belgium I've seen a prison cell and execution range very similar to the ones described here, and it was genuinely a chilling experience. If the description of this setting is at all like I think it is, I hope there is a real sense of that in this piece. 

- One idea I was playing with when writing this was that Smith took on this role of executioner to 'save' Robson from it. In the narrative I'm developing here, there's an interesting dynamic between those two characters, with Smith doing what he can to protect Robson's innocence in the hell of war, while Robson is constantly trying to achieve the 'glory' he signed up for. I'll leave that there, as it's something I want to play with in another piece coming up soon. 

That's all for today. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment. 

Absent Friends

As I mentioned yesterday, I have another of the writing exercises complete, and where yesterday's was a prequel to my other World War One work, today's is a conclusion, to these stories at least. I shall be revisiting these characters at some point, but this piece certainly marks the end of their collective story. It is set a few days after this piece.

The piece is based on creating absent characters. Again it's over the word limit, and I've taken a bit of liberty with the brief, focusing more on the effect of the absence on a character present. The first 500 words or so do work on building the non-present characters, but after that it really is the story of the protagonist himself. Here it is:

Absent Friends/After the End

The Somme, France, 3^rd July 1916

The dugout was silent, Robson’s reverberating full-belly laugh conspicuous by absence. The pile of papers on Smith’s makeshift desk uncharacteristically scattered, July snow fallen in sheets on the surface. Next to them, neatly perched on the edge, a parcel that had arrived too late, unopened.

Anders lit the candle as night fell, and turned for a moment to ask what time the lads wanted waking. The words were halfway from his lips when they stumbled and slid to a halt. The sound seemed to echo for an age before fading, as if waiting for a reply that would never come. He forced out a choked cough, shattering the spell before it could fully take effect. Too long in this ghostly silence and he’d start hearing voices.

No, that wasn’t it. He would never stop hearing them. Smith barking orders, a compassion behind the barbed commands. Johnson would never stop complaining about the way the lintel hung too low on the left or the constant but gradual trickle of water from the leaking roof of the dugout. As the watch hit nine, he almost heard Robson’s cheery daily announcement he was heading off for duty. Anders turned to wish him good luck before he could stop himself.

After an eternity of the echoing voice calling back, the silence gathered and stalked back in, the ticking of the old watch the only noise keeping it at bay. Anders pulled out the watch, the brass case glinting in the candlelight, and watched the hand tick round, seeming not to count seconds but hours in the never-silent half-light. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

For the thousandth time, Anders heard Smith telling that same story, how this watch had been pressed into his hands as a comrade lay dying in the mud, how he had kept it safe across the breadth of France, and when home on leave, had paid a small fortune to have engraved into the polished brass casing, a dead man’s words.

When all is burnt and all is dead

When all the world is blood-stained red,

When all our wars come to an end

Then will Death be called our friend.

An epitaph, he’d called it. An epitaph to a good man.

‘Bloody poets,’ Johnson didn’t say as Anders traced the tiny words with a finger, ‘if they’d spend as much time with a rifle as a pen we’d be a damn sight closer to winning this damned war.’ The tirade continued for some time, silently writhing in Anders’ head, over and over and over and over and…

He stopped still, frozen but for his eyes, darting from place to place, looking for any sign of life. Had the plates moved from the table where they had taken a last supper? Had a shadow passed over the door as an old friend returned? No. There was no one and nothing, Anders reminded himself, all those lives were stilled, those pulses dead, those laughs, cut off mid-stream and lying decaying in mud. Nothing in here but him and the ghosts. All night, he sat there, not sleeping, not moving, just him and the ghosts, the candle becoming a puddle of wax, until the first lights of day dispelled the thoughts for another brief respite.

In that instant, he could take it no longer. There was nothing to be done but sit and grow old, and he wasn’t meant for that. He was without purpose. As menial as his tasks had been, Anders had always performed them to the best of his ability, not out of a sense of forced duty or pride, but because every meal, every mud-filled mug of tea, every almost-clean uniform he laid out for them could be their last. Everything he did, he did out of respect for these better, braver men who would surely die, and now they all had, there was nothing left. No service or small favour freely given could help them now.

And then the thought came to him, a flash of clarity that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Hurriedly, he grabbed a pencil and paper, and scrawled a brief message onto it, childlike enthusiasm infecting his ageing frame. He placed the watch in the paper, folding it twice, and left it on the desk, before climbing to his feet with more vigour than he had felt in a long while, and walking slowly towards the early morning sunlight and beyond.

He passed through the trench unnoticed, just another batman on an errand, until he found a space filled only with the dead that had been cut down before they could leave the muddy slit.one hand after another, he clawed his way up the latter and over, and out into the wasteland that stretched for miles, a world of the dead where nothing grew.

He did not know how long he walked among the dead, and the almost-dead, who reached out and called for home and family, or uttered streams of curses and unintelligible babblings. Across mountains and valleys of that scarred land he walked, waiting for the bullet that only came when every last drop of his sanity was torn away. Silhouetted against the rising sun, Anders slumped to the sniper’s welcome bullet, and died, staring into the clear blue sky.

***

Epilogue:

The watch now sits, quite lost, among thousands of other artefacts recovered from those hellish places. The face is cracked, the mechanism muddied and jammed up, the time frozen at some moment from another age. The inscription is barely readable, only a few thin lines on the battered case. You might see it one day, small and insignificant, a piece of useless metal amidst a sea of others.

What you will not see is the paper it was wrapped in, an unassuming white sheet with a few lines of scribbled text. It has decayed, fallen apart, become scattered on the wind. Words that were forgotten.

Better men that me have died. I go to join them. Remember us.  

Author's notes:

- This is very much a tragedy, a story of loss and madness and ultimately suicide. As always, I hope not to have mistreated the context or content. It is also undoubtedly the end of the story of these men, although as I said before there are many tales still untold. I do hope this provides a sense of conclusion, though. 

- The last part I'm not sure on. Part of me wants to spend more time on the conclusion, but I feel with the previous piece I have done all I can on No-Man's-Land without needless repetition, given that I eventually intend to combine them all into a single longer piece. I do like the almost desensitised feeling of the last couple of paragraphs, but I also feel the need to redo them. In my head, I had a scene from Sebastian Faulks' novel Birdsong (a great book, by the way) in which a character goes 'over the top' and experiences a moment of outstanding clarity, seeing the world as almost beautiful for a split-second before all hell breaks loose. I wasn't intending to copy this, but there were a couple of bits I wanted to try and convey. I may well re-read that scene and then re-draft this ending, as I really do like the contrast he manages to achieve. 

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to comment.