Based on the poem: 'The Sentry' by Wilfred Owen.
Another explosion rattled the thick walls of the cellar room, the sturdy building shook under the impact of the shells hitting the ground around it. The rain poured down the stairs in a waterfall of murky slime, carrying debris and dust down into the fortuitous hideout. The muck was waist high and slowly rising, lapping hungrily at the steps it caked with slippery mud. The water threatened to drown the men inside as it had the stench of death, dust and decay.
A group of young soldiers huddled together in a corner, frightened by the frantic thumps of falling bombs. Some held on to each other, others tested their frail bravery and stood apart in the mud. One young soul chanced a worried glance at its senior officer, well, senior relative to the others, the Commander had long since left them, buried under two days' worth of mud. One of the impacts hit closer than the others, all the wide and panicked eyes looked up at the ceiling, watching a thick layer of dust sprinkle down and rest atop the swirling mass of mud.
A thud resonated in the stairwell, the widened and torch-lit eyes reoriented to face the source. They watched as, sploshing in the waterfall, bouncing from step to step, the sentry's body, his rifle, a torch, the remains of what used to be a house and mud in ruck on ruck tumbled down into the cellar. The torch swept the walls in a great arc before losing itself in the depth of murky water, its light fading from existence.
A few of the soldiers disentangled from the mass and dredged the body up for dead, dragging the limp form out of the mud and into a corner where they'd laid the other battered body they used to call Commander; until he whined,
"O sir-my eyes- I'm blind, -I'm blind, -I'm blind."
The senior man brought up his torch in front of the sentry's eyes, he told the glassy eyed face whose cover of mud was already streaked with tears, that if he could see the tiniest, or most blurred light, then he surely was not blind and in time they would heal.
"I can't." he sobbed. Milky white orbs bulged out, huge and eerie in the stark light of the torch.
The senior man stepped back, leaving the soldiers to care for their fallen friend and posted Next. He would have sent for a stretcher, or at least medical attention, if his communications had not failed him the day prior.
Time passed and the shelling continued, bombarding the shelter, shaking the building down to its roots deep in the mountain. The soldiers were sent flying against walls like so many dolls or down under the mud where they might have drowned themselves for good. The lights were lost under the water, the light flickering out and leaving the shivering and shuddering huddle in the darkness and the din.
The senior-man, half-listening to the sentry's moans and mumbles and jumps, through the chattering of teeth and the pummeling above, heard the sentry shout.
"I see your lights!"-But all of theirs had long gone out.