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THE ALLEYNIAN 709
CREATIVE WRITING
The screech of a whistle cut my thoughts short, and we were all lurched into action
The screech of a whistle cut my thoughts short, and we were all lurched into action, rampant shouts echoing as we clambered up the wooden ladders and into the stronghold of death, the rattle of machine guns sending a sea of bullets flying at us. I looked around and watched thousands of bodies go limp and plummet into thousands of murky graves, staining the ground a distinct red that watered the ever-growing soil of rotting bodies. I dived into a crater, clinging to my gun and nervously peering over the mud; all around me, I watched as the thud of shells dug more graves for our troops, I watched as the symphony of war erupted into melody, accompanying a chorus of screams and cries echoing from a mass of soldiers. I sucked in the fumes and scampered up the crater, running out onto the great plain. Yet my journey was cut short as time itself stopped; the soldiers advancing in union came to a halt and the shells were held motionless in air. The only thing that continued to move was a distinct gold bullet, cutting through the air and hurling itself in my direction. I felt helpless, paralyzed in motion, unable to move or to defend myself. Man’s great invention tore into my flesh, throwing me off my feet, sending a searing pain
through my body. I felt my head hit the ground and I heard distant voices screaming ‘Medic!’ This was it , I thought, the ending, the final page of my story , and for the first time in months I felt happy and calm; a smile curled its way across my face as I looked into the sky, narrowing my eyes, breathing my last breaths, shedding my last tears. Behind the murky grey of the clouds and the smoke emerged just a trickle of light, a trickle of hope that scraped its way through the mess. I closed my eyes. But fate had a different interpretation. It wasn’t my time. I awoke on a stretcher somewhere, bandages strung round my body, concealing my wounds from sight. All around me were men, whimpering in pain. The tent was cold and dirty. In the distance came the faint booms of shells and if you listened closely enough, you could just make out the spitting of guns. I lay my head back on the ground, feeling the uncomfortable sensation of uneven ground that was my pillow. I closed my eyes for a minute, breathing in the fresh smell of charcoal and smoke, before opening my eyes and … There I was. Home. I glanced round my room in search of a German machine gun, before lying back in my bed, exhausted. Over and over, I told myself it’s not real, you’re home, you’re safe, they can’t hurt you any more, yet no matter how much I told myself this, I remained in the cycle that I lived over and over again, like a recurring dream that is so vivid that it almost seems real, or a broken record player that can only play the same song over and over again. Now I wake up in the trenches and I fall asleep in the trenches. I feel that same pain rush through my arm every time I am shot. My bed turns into that same crater, the floor turns into the same slimy mush and the drawers and cabinets in my room morph into the green shapes of soldiers. Running. Falling. Dying.
16th August, 1914. We strolled down the streets, met with eruptions of applause and cheers as women and children clapped us off. Dressed in our strapping green uniforms, we talked amongst ourselves, waved to our families and laughed. Laughed . People gave us food, drinks, cigarettes, photos, matches, blankets and firm pats on the back, congratulating us for our efforts. We met their compliments with warm smiles, so completely drowned in our optimism and pride that we failed to realise the severity of the situation. After that, no one laughed. The year or so that I spent in those trenches is a blur. I remember landing in France and being whisked off to the front line. I remember my first impressions, the impressions that crushed the optimistic glow we’d left England with. Mud was piled upon mud to form the great pyramids that leached branches of mangled barbed wire, stretching across the trenches. Disguised behind these pyramids were our graves, the muddy marshes we called home. Within these graves were the sunken faces of soldiers, some sitting in the mud, deluded with sleep deprivation, others poised just below the pyramids, peering over the top, staring into an abyss of craters and carcasses. Occasionally, the shrill rattle of a gun or a symphony of eruptions from the sounds of artillery would echo round the landscape. They were at first deafening, but eventually became mere taps, knocking at your broken eardrums. All the soldiers glanced up upon our arrival and stared at us for a moment, before they got back to their activities of smoking, patrolling or just staring at the ground. I didn’t really know how to feel upon our arrival; the initial excitement had since been drowned out, suffocated
by an ambivalent state of dread, but also intrigue: intrigue at the events that had induced such attitudes. After that, I have nothing but vague memories of blindly firing my Lee Enfield at the horizon and weaving between different trenches. And then the Somme came. Rumours had spiralled for months, but it wasn’t until early 1916 that we were told about the ‘Somme offensive’, the fateful battle. We would push beyond the Germans’ front line, breaking their strongholds, ‘advancing further to victory,’ as the generals put it. I didn’t know how to react to this new information. Some soldiers were deluded by the generals’ propaganda and thus had a surge of motivation. Others were overwhelmed, trembling at the thought of death around the corner. Eventually, that fateful day came. There we were, lined up, rows of soldiers, awaiting the shrill screech of a whistle that would command our fate. Nerves wound their way up my spine as I waited in anticipation; to my right, a soldier I’d never seen before threw up in fear, his face bleakly pale as he peered up at me in embarrassment. I gave a reassuring smile; that’s all we could give. There was no escaping the hard truth of death. But eventually, after living there for so long, you realised that life had since passed, leaving you wound up in an ongoing hell, a barren wasteland deprived of anything natural, corrupted by the bleakness of war. You kept going because that’s all you could do.
But fate had a different interpretation. It wasn’t my time
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