Bang!
A gunshot rang out clear across the camp. It could have been the enemy. Jack wished so badly that it were the enemy, but he knew better.
The officer's dinner had included the issuing of the orders for the summary execution of five men in the infirmary who had been spooked by the war; 'shell shocked' from the horrors they had faced out on the battlefield. Unfit for battle. Unfit to live.
Military efficiency was a cruel system of facts. The enemy had an endless supply of conscripts to throw at their defenses. This was a war of numbers, keeping the good guys numbers up and finding ways to cut the enemy's numbers down.
The up was made of constant recruitment, the over-taxing of an entire generation. The down was made of gruesome war machines and weapons made for one purpose: to cut down human life. There was no room for error in victory.
So when the men who were not made for war, not built to face down the hellmouth of the Somme battlefield, were crippled by fear, they were no longer part of the upswing of British numbers. All they were in the eyes of the military stratagem were mouths to feed and men to clothe. They took up beds and wasted fuel on transport. There was no room in the provisions for such cowardice. Such humanity.
History would remember Somme as a bloodbath made of mortars, trenches, bayonets and patriotism. What it would forget are those men who were too gentle or kind to withstand all that. The ones that were shot by their officers for being a broken piece of the war machine.
Tonight all it meant was five more empty beds for soldiers to die in.