A Shot Through the Heart
The heavy scent of earth clogs my nose, my throat and showers down onto me like rain. Shaking, I shook it off as the thick mud drags me down as I inch forward on my stomach. All around, everything was a haze, quiet and misty sole for a high pitched ringing that grew in my ears. Incapable of focusing as everything seemed to duplicate itself and dance in my eye. A bright light flashes and I instinctively duck again, feeling sharp splinters and shards hit, tearing my hand and the small bit of exposed cheek like some hell-sent demon.
Sulphur laced the air, gun powder and smoke taints it. No fresh breeze but a warm and uncomfortable whisk. Blood, death, gangrene, and decay all made the air around me dense suffocating and drowning. A screech echoed as screams of pain cleared the buzzing as the merciless rattling of firearms rained down from both sides. Finally I had crawled to a large hole, sliding into it, boots finding stability on something soft that hissed. A foul stench crept up as I gag covering my mouth and nose, stepping away from the half decayed remains of what use to be a young male.
My hands groped the side of the large fissure, stepping around the body, my knees tremble weak and exhausted, ready to buckle. I refuse to think of the physical pain that burns through my veins, which thins my blood, quickens my heart, as it froze and lock my joints. A large explosion went off in the background shaking the earth and causing my body to fall. I finally my knees gave in to their will to buckle as sharp shards of metal projected all around. My body fell, before I could start to scale the wall of the hole, my head hitting against the side of the hole letting loose dirt powder my face.
"Help will come soon," I mutter as I lay here slumped, everything spinning and flashing as the edges of my vision was nothing but a sharp mist. "He will be here soon, he will be here soon," I groaned clenching my jaw as blood trickles from my cheek and my hand was nothing but a throbbing pain. Bringing it up in front of my face my eyes toke a while to focus on the seizuring mass of bloody flesh. My jaw locked as I scream through my teeth, trying to move each joint of my hand. Dread as I realized two of my fingers were barely there, just torn flesh hardly identifiable as my whole hand was gleaming a crimson.
I take a shaky breath, closing my eyes, hands going from my forehead and into my hair streaking it with my own blood as I pull it back from my face. My back pressed against the cold earth as a sob escapes my throat. I sat there for what felt like an eternity, shoulders heaving as I stare up hopelessly at the sky that lit up every so often from bright explosions. A deadly infatuation of beauty masking the unseen death that lurks across the earth and sails the wind.
I lick my chapped lips, tasting the metallic blood, dried over the dirt and salt of perspiration. Taking a deep breath, resting one hand on the wall and the other on my knee, I got up stepping around the body, pausing only to make sure that I still was in possession of my gun, before starting to scale back up. I didn't have any time to react as I was blown back into the hole from a blast, dirt collapsing and raining down, filling my open mouth drowning my scream of pain. My eyes burn, my face warm as the dirt stuck to it, as I lay there stunned drowning in the earth's embrace.
"He's not coming," the thoughts echo in my mind, everything once more a fuzzy white as more dirt fell on me like sand in an hour glass. Laying there, I wanted to give up, to let the land I was, I love, I protect, bury me under her weight. To sleep, to dream. To believe those words that circulated in my mind that he will never come back, not with help. Who would ever come back to this?
Suffocating, I only just realized as the panic claws at my throat, my body's reaction to the lack of much needed oxygen. Pain burning as I summon the last of my strength, clawing the dirt away. Air. Choking and sputtering, spitting out the soil as I gasp in the heavy stench of decay and sulphur, burning its way down through my lungs but air none the less. Blindly I paw at the mist, climbing out of my grave and running my hand down the side of the hole, praying that it was the side leading back to my trench and not the Germans. Agonizing minutes as I blindly dug the toes of my boots into the soft wall of the hole climbing up. Once out, I took a few steps before hearing the shots as a bullet grazed my shoulder making me drop to my stomach by instincts. I blink feverously as I desperately try to make the fog disappear, trying to ignore the screams as men of all ages, all nationalities were slaughtered. Echoes of those in agony, limbs blown off as finally they are quieted by a shot. Cries of those who's bowels have spilt out scream for mercy in the shape of morphine as they lay in a pool of their own blood. I already know that pale frail bodies would be convulsing perhaps foaming blood from their mouths before She, the lady Mercy, takes them away from this. Boys, not men, fresh from schools shook and tremble, broken, muttering and yelling for their mothers. Slaughter. This was not fighting. This was slaughter, the truth of war. No glory. No true winners, only slaughter. I hear the Dutch, voices frenzied as more explosions praying for the barrage of my side. My joints screamed for rest as I cover my head from more rubble from the heavy artillery that rain all around, hitting their marks into the many scapegoats that Netherlands and other Allied Countries may have sent to this doomed stretch of land. As more and more men fell like leaves in the autumn, staining the ground reds with speckles of brown from their uniforms.
Finally the mist was beginning to clear as I inch myself forwards as planes whirl, buzzing over head. Limited vision cripples me more than my hand or my shoulder, my good hand moving to rubbed dirt away from my eyes, hardly able to feel the moistened skin from the burn that varnish my face from the dry and charred fingertips. I crawled behind the rock with much difficulty where two young men shivered with hands over their heads, helmets thrown off from their panic. I couldn't help but look over at them in an attempt to see what they once were. Perhaps these two boys were their school's star football players. Perhaps one wrote poetry, soothing those with tender words of love. The other was maybe the jokester of the class, making others laugh with ease. Now look at them, beaten and broken, infected and striped of all that they were worth. The ones that never will survive this. Even if they were to walk away, they would never fit into society after this. They will forever be the broken, the lost ones, haunting the earth. The poet saddened, depressed, creating heart wrenching pieces, no longer tempests of love and passion, swallowing pill after pill in an endless cycle like the waves of an ocean forever in storm. The jokester no longer capable of smiling, life wasted away by the liquid in the bottle. Frowning and yelling, a soon to be broken mess behind closed doors. Tossing from the hounds that plagues his thoughts when the lights go out. Ones doomed to be lost. And will I too be like them? Going on in life with the burden of living for the rest of time thinking of this moment when I'm alone at night for a few more decades to come. Forced to find happiness and move on in coming years once this hell ends, not for myself but for my people?
I grab the helmet nearest putting it on one of the boy's head as I scrambled for the other.
"They'll come and we'll be able to retreat. Keep your head on your shoulders," my voice was hardly audible, coarse and cracking in my throat as I look into their wide and frightened eyes, as they darted like a scared mouse. I quickly unclasp the canister on my belt, screwing the cork off before downing a quick gulp of the alcohol, letting it burn my raw throat and calming my shaking hand, passing the so called liquid courage to each the boys before closing it and again clasping it onto my belt. I had already lead so many to their death that a part of me feels obligated to at least get these two back from the front and to our own trenches. To save others for my own selfish reasons.
I took a deep breath peering past the rock that shelters us just slightly, fingers running down the calibre of my Dutch Mannlicher, hearing the familiar click as the safety was unlocked and the first of the bullets loaded. I have five shots in the clip, six altogether. The German's MP40s and large amounts of light machine guns which easily outgunned our rifleman, slaughtering most before they can even make it several feet away from our trenches. The luckier ones, more doomed if anything, like myself, would get much deeper. To "safety" and be stuck there, hoping for the barrage from our side so they could retreat, or be killed or worse, injured where no one would be capable of getting to you. Where you would scream and moan through the night. Plaguing your fellow brothers in the darkness until finally you grow silent, dying alone. Checking back to the two boys I spat to the ground getting the dirt out of my teeth.
"When I start shooting," I commanded in Dutch, just realizing that I was speaking as I attract the two boy's attention, "you two need to make your way over to the rock up behind us closer to our trench." They nodded as I peek over the rock locating the gunmen and started shooting. One shot, miss, but enough to make the advancing soldier duck. The second shot was a hit to the left arm, nothing too serious though. I curse squinting an eye in concentration as the rifle trembled in my hands. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, hit, hit, hit, miss. Empty. Jumping from behind the rock I quickly retreated, boots kicking up the uneven ground.
"Don't get shot, don't get shot. You have to stay alive. Just a bit longer, he'll come. He'll show up. He promised. And when he gets here the Germans will be forced to retreat. Just hold in a little longer Lars. Just a little bit longer." The words raced in my mind as I flinch every now and then at the sound of shots that were carried to me by the wind from afar. The dread of being sniped every second they are exposed was enough to keep any a man running quickly for cover. Then, suddenly there was a searing pain as a loud shot rang out.