The Fallen
[They fell with their faces to the foe.]
They've lost, and they know they've lost, are resigned to it. There is no possible way to win. They've thought of every tactic and strategy, spinning them through overwrought minds endlessly, as if another repetition will yield a different outcome. It has become the unwanted pastime of anyone sufficiently sane or sober, and everyone knows the answer to the silent question. They cannot succeed.
There are too many obstacles, from far too many directions. No matter where they turn, no matter where they retreat, or where they advance, there is always a threat. Nowhere is free from the desperate attempt to survive despite all odds; the frontlines are everywhere and whatever direction they face their backs are to another battlefield. They are too few, too poorly armed, too ill-trained, too tired, to ever win.
And the recruitment spiels had never mentioned this, had never said anything about the mud and the blood and the tears. The stories never seem quite real. And this is surely not glory, but there must have been at least some truth to those stories because this looks more like death every day.
But they keep fighting regardless. They keep fighting for days, weeks, well beyond when their endurance should have given out. Surrounded by death and gore and mud and not nearly enough food, they persevere with no hope of reward, no hope of last-minute salvation. There will be no reinforcements appearing in the nick of time.
There is no hope found in anything, not even the concept of surviving another day. Another day's survival only means another day's fighting. The longer they go on, the more pain and hardship they will endure.
But they don't give up, and maybe they've forgotten how. Anyone who wanted surrender had done so, to the hunger and grief and terror and pain. To surrender would be easy; to simply give in and get whatever mercy came from death. Those who remain fight, go through the motions, although there's no sense in it. There's no sense in anything now, and they have no definable reasons for anything, no belief in anything but standing by each other, and they may as well end the way they started.
But they'll never any of them be able to again be who they once were, even if they live. Especially if they live.