And Thus Swung the Pendulum
The pendulum swings.
I imagine the men on the other side of the smoke.
I imagine them marking maps. I imagine their boots, stained with dirt and the blood of the fallen. Marched o'er these torched fields, with nary tree nor scrub.
The attack is coming. A fight to the death, as always.
I imagine bare knuckles clutching rifles.
I imagine the men on the other side. Wondering if their friends will perish this day. If they will meet them in the life beyond this one.
Hard for me to imagine such things. Whatever god may have created this world must look away in shame.
I imagine the men going mad as the chorus of shells begins to fall. Soon the song will reach its coda, in music long since syncopated.
Comes the first wave, over the top. All fall as one, fall dead in their tracks, as we Gears let out song of our own.
The second. The third. The fourth. The same song repeated over and over.
The line is held. Lines always hold. The pendulum swings, but the strings remain in place.
We, all puppets, within this wretched world.
We can hear the cries of the wounded. Language we cannot understand. Meaning, we do.
We know a dozen words for "mother,' for instance.
There are rules of war, even now. The Indies are allowed to retrieve their dead. They will lie within the cool earth. Hopefully deep enough that no shell may disturb them.
Hopefully.
The pendulum swings.
Still in the trenches after our day of truce.
Pot shots taken. Even now, most men aim to miss. Beneath our helmets, we all know we are not so different.
It is raining now. Holes become quagmires. The dead are further buried. I would joke the sky is weeping, but I do not believe it.
No tears left to shed. No grief left to express. Just eternity's monotony, in a world that's long known war.
No trees left for rain to nourish. Naught but stumps.
The commanders talk of new weapons. New breakthroughs. We will sweep the UIR before us.
Objectives to be taken, as ephemeral as a castle in the clouds.
No doubt the UIR's commanders say the same thing.
Words as regular as the pendulum.
Perhaps like us, they dream of going home.
Perhaps like us, they dream of victory.
Men like us dream at night. Dangerous men dream during the day.
The dreams of great men make our nightmares.
Quiet is the night, and so beat quietened hearts.
The pendulum swings.
Winter has come.
Snow blankets the muddy ground. Fills the trenches.
The faint 'boom' of artillery cuts through the frigid air. Song of year's ending. Lament of new year's beginning.
With winter, comes spring, and with it, carnage of new charge.
Blood feeds flowers before drowning them.
Secrets and rumours spread, running swifter even than rats.
Offensives. Withdrawals. Everything between them.
Soon, the truth. We are falling back. Refortifying. The Indies will come, they will bleed upon our new lines.
Promises made, over graves. The dead will not hear these whispered promises. The shells will fall, and the dead will know no rest.
Shed blood and lives. Lying in soil of distant country.
Despite claims, we will forget them. The land will not know them.
Mothers from far away will wipe their tears. Sons and fathers will swear vengeance.
Cycle never-ending.
The pendulum swings.
New trenches. New lines. All wounds made in the flesh of the earth.
Silence. It is spring, but the world is dead. No song of bird, no chitter of fox.
The world itself is bleeding. As if imulsion be its blood.
We all wield the butcher's knife.
The pendulum swings.
Silence broken.
Rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire.
They push. We push.
Ever turning are the gears of war.
See the madness in men's eyes. Maddened by the noise.
Rat-tat-tat within their heads. Splinters burst through skulls, yearning for release.
Mail is delivered. The living take what is given to them. The dead cannot receive, and so, many a parcel is returned to the sack.
(The mail never seems to arrive in time.)
Periscopes up and down the line, espying No Man's Land. Like sailors on ships of old.
What do we behold in splinter of mind's eye?
Before bullet from rifle shatters?
No answer.
No sound, but pendulum's swing.