AN: I have decided to write a tale of the battle of Flers-Courcelette from Walter Blythe's perspective. I hope it is historically accurate, and hope you like it. (A follow-up to The Night He Forgot, the Morning She Remembered.) Revised!
Walter Blythe shut his eyes against the chilly September air. His combat boots were caked thick with mud, and his coat was splotched with the blood of his comrades. Their stretcher-bearer had been killed, and so had those waiting for help. The trenches were crawling with rats, and their little claws made wet scratch-pat-pat noises as they worked tunnels under the soldier's feet.
It couldn't be any worse, the young Canadian thought. His brothers were somewhere else, and his old life was far away across the sea. He clutched his bolt-action rifle close to his chest, a "gift," from a dead British soldier he had found along the side of the road. He was grateful to have it; the awful Canadian rifles jammed and one found themselves hoping that their combat partners would die so that they could have a working gun.
Walter thought of his family back in Canada, and the image of Rainbow Valley shone vividly behind his eyelids. A shower of gunfire erupted nearby.
"Those fucking bastards!" Walter heard Jerry Meredith shout, ducking back behind the dirt wall. He was sporting a livid, bleeding scratch across his cheek. He wiped the blood away with his sleeve and looked to Walter. "Walt," he said in a hoarse voice, "Ken's been injured out there."
"Can't he move?" Walter shouted back over the din of shellfire.
"He's trying, but he got caught under one of the tanks," Jerry replied. Walter made a split second decision. He peered tentatively out from the trench and found his man, lying now in the shadow of two flanking tanks that moved sluggishly beyond their flipped counterpart.
Walter ran like the Hyde-cat and took Ken roughly by the arm, his boots sticking in the mud. Ken looked up at him and struggled against the heavy metal that fell in a plank across his left arm. Walter cut the fabric that held him, and, using the tanks as cover, ran the injured man back to the safety of the trench. When he got there, Jerry took Ken, and began to move him back where he could be treated.
Walter's brow was slick with sweat, but when he went to rub his forehead, he found that his hand came away with blood. He felt dizzy from the sight of it, and did not know from whence it came, but when he heard his commander yell for them to advance, he stepped out of the trench and moved with his comrades across the muddy ground. The Battle of Mud had begun.
