From Boys to Men
Chapter Seven
It was silent, eerily silent. Barely a soul spoke as they gathered their things, fastening belts and helmets securely. It was unnerving to see the ease with which some carried their guns, the lack of expression on their faces, as though this was just another day.
Within an hour, guns would be firing, people would be running…people would be dying, with only enough training to know how to reload their rifles, they would be thrown headfirst into battle. The thought was enough to make several people vomit before it even began. They were in platoons now, Oliver was one of the unfortunate victims of nausea and was now more green than white as he stood beside the twins. To the left of Platoon Griffon, Raven was stationed and beside them, Snake. To their right was Phoenix and Badger. Padfoot, Prongs and Moony stood grimly beside each other, the cowardly Wormtail a little ways behind them.
George, his arms tingling less than pleasantly, was slow to pick up his gun. It was heavier than it had been the other times he had held it. Or maybe it was his arms that were heavier, he couldn't tell. He now realised, and wasn't sure why he hadn't noticed it before, that there was a ledge a few feet up the wall of the trench, which would undoubtedly add enough height to allow the men to fire without leaving the offered protection of the trenches. It was the allied British and French that would advance in an attempt to break the defences of the opposition and mercifully this trench was almost at the very back.
The silence was horribly deafening now, Fred was quite sure he could actually hear the hearts of the soldiers around him beating. One man kissed the small cross that hung around his neck and closed his eyes in a way that Fred could only assume meant he was praying. There was movement from somewhere and turning his head to the right he could see a group climbing quietly out of the trench, crouching low as they ran.
"You alright?"
"Yeah…I guess." Fred muttered.
George tried to laugh weakly and nudged his twin "Yeah, yeah me too."
A few moments later, a deafening roar shook the ground, frightfully loud and yet far from them. More than one man yelled and ducked in panic, Wormtail one of them. Unanimously, upon command, the company was moving forward, over the wall of the trench. Oliver paused a moment to pull Fred up and then they were running, rifles clutched firmly to their chests, following Moony across the harsh land that was the Western Front. The explosion had been a mine, it was visible now, a good fifty yards away, a large cloud of smoke and debris where there had once been solid ground.
George looked back, searching through the mass of soldiers for familiar faces, this proved a bad idea and he very nearly toppled into a ditch and in fact would have had someone not tugged him sideways. Platoon Raven was there, and Phoenix too, not that there was time to distinguish who was from where. There was no gunfire, not yet, not even a sight of a single German. It still felt surreal, as though it were all an illusion and again, everything lapsed into silence. For one agonizingly slow minute George could hear nothing but the dull crunching of boots. A blonde Captain, presumably that of Platoon Raven shouted something and with that the silence was shattered. The heavy fire of artillery filled the air and not a moment too soon they had thrown themselves to the ground.
"Don't close your eyes you blithering idiot!" Fred shouted, hitting his brother.
"One hundred yards…that's not far between us and them…there's a trench thirty yards from here. Don't hesitate to shoot!" Padfoot's familiar voice instructed. "Lockhart!"
The blonde Captain the twins had not recognised was up, his gun held at the ready; he sprinted, not making it ten yards before another mine went off, close enough to send chunks of rock flying their way. Only then did the twins realise the magnitude of this. On every side, thousands upon thousands of Brits and French alone fought, guns firing with a disturbing ease.
Oliver already had his gun ready to fire, finger on the trigger, he sprinted, the first of the lot of them to make for the trench. A burst of fire nearby and Fred could have sworn he actually felt a bullet flying very close to him. Leaping the last five yards he rolled, less than gracefully into the trench, George catapulting into him as he mirrored his brother's action.
"Oh God…oh God…" George wasn't even sure whether it was Fred or himself who said it. For all the world he thought he was colour blind.
The trench was nothing but a mess of green and brown. A combination of the dust in the air and the naturally dull colours that was their surroundings, accompanied by the green of identical infantry uniforms, only served to further darken the mood and made it nearly impossible to tell one soldier from another. Prongs and another soldier appeared half dragging Lockhart who mercifully appeared not to be dead, only out cold.
"I can't use it! I can't!" Fred blinked, gritting his jaw and trying his best just to hold the gun and not throw it away. It was in that precise moment that twins looked down to see a sight to make even the thickest skinned person nauseas.
The bottom of the trench was spotted, barely twenty minutes into the offensive, with bodies. Some twitching, some groaning and others were not moving at all, almost every one of them was spattered with dark blotches of blood.
"Don't just sit there! Be useful!" Someone shouted, though probably not at them. Trying his very best not to vomit, George placed a foot on the ledge much the same as in the trench they had come from and stood on it. The sight above the wall of the trench was worse. The dust had cleared slightly, the opposition was visible now, distinguishable by the pointed spike on their helmets. Like the British, their opponents crouched, or lay flat in self-preservation.
"Fred! Get up here…" Hesitantly George mirrored the movement of the men alongside him in the trench, laying his rifle close to the ground, his finger poised on the trigger and frozen in place. Someone appeared beside him, but it wasn't Fred.
"Oliver?" He was barely recognisable, dust and dirt coated his skin and clothes and…was that blood on his leg?
Another mine somewhere shook the ground, jolting them off the ledge. More than one man was screaming, George lost all sense of direction as the shock of the blast temporarily stunned him.
"Fred!" Where was he? They had been separated, clearly, and there was little hope Fred would hear him above all the noise.
Oliver was running now, pulling George behind him to a spot where the wall of the trench been sloped, a result of one of the blasts, a mess of wood, stone, earth and blood served as a kind of ramp.
"Let bleeding go of me!"
Wood did so, his face hollow and jaw shaking violently, crouching beside the slope, making use of the convenient vantage point. He looked at George properly then and blinked.
"Where's Fred?"
"I don't know!"
Glancing at the bodies littering the ground was a terrible mistake, George's head immediately conjured images he had no desire to entertain.
Dammit, Fred…don't you dare get shot…
"Oliver…your leg…"
"I think a bullet grazed it…it's not that bad though…I think."
There was another unwanted image, the hospital facilities…they would never be enough. Not for this many.
xxxXxx
Bill Weasley lifted his rifle, a year of experience behind him, dropping to his knees behind a makeshift wall of sandbags and planks that sheltered one of the field guns. With him were three others, one was an officer setting up the large weapon.
He rose, and along with three others, let loose a short stream of fire before dropping back down defensively. It even unnerved himself sometimes, how natural this movement came to him, how easy it was to pull the trigger of a gun. Bill could feel bullets pelting into the sand bags, the only thing separating himself from the opposition's fire. His throat had closed up marginally, and blood was pounding loudly in his ears, so much so he could barely hear the frantic orders being barked by the officer. His brothers were out there, he had no idea where. He feared for Charlie even at the best of times, it was alarming, though no longer surprising, how prone that man was to being shot. Now he had Fred and George to worry about too. He was confident that Charlie could handle himself well enough and in fact he had saved Bill's life on more than one occasion. But the twins…they'd barely held a gun before, let alone shot from one. It was a horrible position to be in, Bill knew that himself.
How distraught their mother must have been to have to send two more sons off to war. He rose again, on the officer's orders, to fire. This time watching a German or two being cut down, and a soldier of their own being hit in the shoulder. Instinctively Bill cried out, tearing the bandage they each carried from the wounded Englishman's pouch and pressed it to the wound in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding and save the man's life.
"Hold it there!" He cried, though barely registered the words leaving his mouth. Images plagued his mind, his brothers, wounded or dead on the battlefield. It was difficult enough seeing any old Tom, Dick or Harry in that condition.
There was a roar and Bill's ears rung as the large field gun fired, momentarily deaf he leant back against the wall, watching a stream of enemy fire tear through the sandbags. The officer operating the large piece of artillery fell dead, much to the horror of the other soldiers, who could do nothing but return fire.
"Weasley!"
Bill turned to face his wounded comrade and arched an eyebrow in spite of the situation.
"What?"
"You just got promoted."
xxxXxxx
The man to the right of Fred, who had been separated from George in the to do, dropped and for one horrible second Fred thought he'd been shot, but caught sight of him running, head down in another direction. Almost immediately another took his place and Fred did a double take. His face was smudged, blackened with dirt, but it was Baker alright.
"You alright?" He roared over the din of gunfire.
Fred clenched his jaw, glancing frantically along the line of infantry for George, to no avail, the fire was growing louder, it seemed closer now and he had to shout to be heard as he deflected the question.
"Are you?"
Miles nodded grimly and straightened up on the ledge again, his head, shoulders and upper torso protruding above the trench like so many around them, like Fred.
"I think so-"
Fred's mouth grew still drier, if it were possible, his eyes opened wide with horror as he instinctively ducked. One instant the older boy had been preparing to fire, the next, only inches away from Fred, he had let out a scream of pain and toppled backwards, a shell buried in his now crimson coated chest. He was dead in moments.
The weapon dropped from Fred's hand and he barely managed to catch it before it went off of its own accord. The Weasley's heart was racing, this was the first man he'd actually watched die, and knew, to some extent, to boot. He choked down the urge to be sick, unable to escape the thought that it would have been him had that bullet flown but a few inches to the side. For several moments he simply stared at the body, trying to accept it.
George…where was George? God, what if he had been hit?
Fred knew it now, as he raised his gun and squeezed the trigger, that there was no time to dwell on the reality of the situation, no time to curl up and hide. His only choices were to kill, or to be killed.
