As I Lay Dying

Two

1916

"Harry... What does it feel like to kill someone?" 

Jimmy pushes at a lump of mud with his boot then looks over at me, his brown eyes wide and forehead creased into a worried frown.

"Is that what you've been thinking about all day?" I smile. These past couple of weeks I've got to know him well and I could tell something was troubling him today.

"Yeah... I just. I just don't want to do that. I suppose before I came here... Well, I didn't realise what it would be like. It was more like a dream... I don't want to kill someone." He frowns unhappily. "I should have bloody stayed at home. But, well. I need to be prepared... What does it feel like? Is it easy when you're in battle?"

"It doesn't feel like anything. It's you or them..." I trail off and look past him to the full moon peeking over the hills. Something about it gives me a rare pang of homesickness and the unwanted memory of gazing out at the sky from my bedroom window fills my mind.

"Liar." Jimmy gives a nervous laugh and I can't help but smile. I suppose he's got to know me better than I thought as well. I hesitate before speaking again.

"It's horrible." I say with quiet honesty. "It's the worst thing you'll ever do because... Because they're just like us-"

"What, the Germans?" Jimmy asks incredulously.

"Yes. They're just young men following orders, serving their country. It just happens they were born German and you were born English. Maybe in another life you could have been friends... Instead you've got to look into his eyes as you make his wife a widow and his children fatherless."

"But they're the enemy!" Jimmy protests, not wanting to humanise the people he'll have to kill face to face sooner or later.

"No they're not, they're just the same as you and me. Our governments are enemies, not us. We're just people who have dreams and longings, we all just want our own version of a happy, peaceful life. They want to be here about as much as you do. While you sit here thinking about Ellen, there's a German in the next trench thinking about the girl he loves back home. They just send us to do their dirty work and spill blood, they don't care that they're wiping out an entire generation and scarring the ones that survive. Even those of us who make it home will never be the same boys that left, no matter which side we're fighting on."

Jimmy shakes his head, not wanting to agree but I can see I've hit a nerve. We sit quietly for a while before he shuffles closer.

"Harry?"

"Um?" I barely respond, still distracted by my train of thoughts.

"I... I'm scared." He whispers so quietly that I almost miss it. These words are practically treasonous for a solider, we all feel it but you're not meant to say it aloud.

"I- I don't want to die and I don't want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I ended another mans life. I don't want a little German girl to cry for her daddy every night because of me..." His voice breaks and he won't meet my eyes. "But at the same time I'm worried about letting everyone down, that at the last minute I'll fail and won't follow orders, I'll run away or something-"

"That won't happen." I say with quiet confidence. "In battle you get a surge of adrenaline, you're barely aware of anything but making it out alive. You won't run and you won't die, just keep your head about you."

"Hard to do that if they drop a bomb on it." He mutters and I grin wryly.

"As for the other thing... You will have to kill people and you will have to live with it after. That's the burden we all leave here with Jimmy, that's what we'll all have to live with for the rest of our lives, and I can't tell you what that will be like because I haven't done it myself yet."