OF TRENCHES AND DEATH
Chapter IV
France jolted up in his bed after another of his routine nightmares, his palm sweaty, and his face was as pale as a ghost. He tried to regain his breath, closing his eyes to force the horrors of the Trench Warfare out of his mind. Clutching his head, he groaned in frustration as the only thing it did was make the image more vivid. He hated it. He hated that of all the many periods of his long life that he has forgotten, this just had to be not one of them. He remembered it all too clearly when he'd rather not, still felt the soil that was dug out to create the trenches, the scar they left was still there, and he hated it so much. It hurt. It hurt to remember and it hurt to visualize.
Disembodied limbs tangled with the wretched barbed wires, the sound of the machine guns and artilleries that were the reason for the disembodiment of many body parts. All this happened outside the trenches they used for protection but that didn't mean they were safe there. It wasn't only the sound of blasting weapons that filled the air, not only the stench of blood that filled one's nostrils. The soldier's didn't have only one type of enemy. Where one was loud and deafening, the other was silent, stealthy, and sly, traitorous, even. Where the ones outside died a sudden death, the ones inside die slowly, painfully. And all of this pain, France felt. However, it wasn't his enemy nations that he hated during that war. It was their leaders, his own included. It was their greed for power that led millions of death – unnecessary death. But it wasn't entirely their fault. He and his fellow personifications could have stood up to them, could have stopped them. But they didn't, and he knew why. Each and every one of them was also blinded by the power being offered to them. And he knew he wasn't the only one suffering these nightmares.
The thought made France chuckle humourlessly. "It was us that made our own scars." He mumbled to his self as he waited for the sun to rise.