Where Death Sings

twelve // william

We are back in our trenches, our muddy trenches. I'm hold up in one of our front-line dugouts with Smith, Scott and a few other soldiers I have never met before; new recruits. My ears are still ringing and my body is still aching from the offensive. If it was up to me, I wouldn't move for days, but it's not up to me. Sooner or later, I have to move. After all, there will be several more offensives, several more counter-attacks, and several more artillery showers before I can consider myself remotely safe in the small, French town a few miles away.

   Cook steps into the dugout. His face is dirty and his uniform is adorn with dirt, ashes and blood, just like mine. He moves over to where I sit with Smith and Scott, and slumps down onto the ground next to us. He lets out a long sigh before he gives us an exhausted look.

   "Hey, lads." He says. "Good to see you."

   We agree, and let him know that it's good to see him too. It's always nice to see a familiar face after a big offensive, at least if it belongs to someone who is still alive. They are not always alive, and over the last couple of weeks the familiar faces, the alive ones, have become fewer and fewer. When I first got here, when I first put my feet on French soil, fresh out of training, familiar faces seemed to be everywhere I looked. Now you have to search for the familiar faces, walk through the trenches, look through every dugout. In your search you hope that some of those faces will look back at you, that they are still left.

   I'm frightened that we one day will be gone. I'm frightened that we who have fought together for so long will be gone and forgotten. We who have grown closer than we thought was possible. We who have put each other's lives in each other's hands. We who still remember the first casualty of the company. I'm frightened that in the end, there will be nothing but new recruits left, and that it will happen soon. The rest of us will be erased from the face of the earth, and never be spoken of again.

   "Have you seen anyone else?" Scott asks Cook. "Are they alright? Who's gone?"

   "Elliott's at the aid post, that's all I know." Cook replies as he takes out a cigarette and lights it.

   "Miller, Murphy and Jackson." I say. Cook turns his eyes to me, but remains silent. He doesn't need anything to be explained, he knows just like I know. No more words need to be spoke to inform everyone what has happen, what kind of fate Miller, Murphy and Jackson met during the offensive. We know that they are gone. Dead. They will never go home again, they won't even leave the front. They bodies are too far way for us to retrieve. They belong to the battered earth now. Their fates have already been decided for them. No man's land will be their final resting place, and even though it hurts to think about their fate it's something that can happen to all of us. We might not want it, but we might just actually end up there; faced down, battered bodies, empty eyes.

   I push myself up from the ground and tell my friends that I will be back before I leave the dugout. The sky outside has started to shift colours, the blue is slowly being replaced with pink and orange. Another day filled with death is coming to an end. The bright colours in the sky make my surroundings a little less dull, a little less grey, as I hurry to the aid post.

   A medic looks up from a wounded soldier when I stumble around the corner. I move closer and let my eyes wander from one wounded soldier to another, searching for a familiar face.

   "Who are you looking for?" The medic asks.

   "Elliott. Frank Elliott." I reply, and the medic points at one of the stretchers.

   Elliott's youthful face is hard to recognise. It's almost impossible to see the colour of his skin, there is too much blood. However it's not the blood that makes my insides knot. A large proportion of his face seems to have been torn off, and there's still a grey, metallic fragment stuck in his head. His body is just as tortured as his face, he looks broken where he lies. His chest moves slightly, his breaths strained.

   "Elliott." I say, and put my hand on his shoulder. "Elliott. You'll be alright. I promise you."

   For a second, the twenty year old boy opens his eyes and he looks at me. His eyes, which have the same colour as the sky on a sunny summer's day, are filled with sadness and pain. They linger on me for a while before they fall shut once again.

   "He's already gone, soldier. Nothing you can do." The medic says from where he's standing, helping another soldier.

   I stare at Elliott. He's not gone. He's breathing. Elliott is alive.

   "You'll be alright." I say and give my friend a light pat. "You'll be alright." I repeat, but his chest has stopped moving. He is lying completely still, completely silent.

   I let my hand rest on Elliot's chest, and I look at the dead body of my good friend. Even though we met while enlisting, if feels like we've know each other for much longer than that. I remember the first time he put on his uniform. He had asked me to inspect him, so everything looked alright. I remember his proud posture, and the brightness and excitement in his eyes, the same excitement we all felt before it was taken away from us in the trenches.

   "Do I look like a real soldier now, William?" He had asked. "Do I?"

   "You look like a proper one." I had replied, and given him a pat on the back. "The Germans got nothing on you, lad."

   I smile at the fond memory of a boy who no longer exits, and I mourn his death for I knew a completely different boy to the dead one in front of me; one with happiness in his eyes, and one who still hadn't seen most of his friends die.

   I run my hand over Elliott's head, not caring about the blood, and silently I wish him a safe journey wherever he might be going before I carefully look through the pockets of his uniform. I take out a small package of food and put it into one of my own pockets. Then I find an envelope. I hold it up in front of me, observing it. The paper has a brown tint and seems to have survive without damaged with the exception of a little bit of blood in one of the corners.

   My heart aches when I realise that it's addressed to a Grace Elliott. I assume it's his wife, and the girl he had married a couple of weeks before he left to fight in a war he was supposed to survive. I put the envelope in the pocket over my heart, where I can carry it with my own letter, until I'm able to send it to his wife, a twenty year old widow.