The air is filled with the smell of cordite and singed earth. Gripping the rough steel of my sub-machine gun as if it’s a safety pole, all I’ve got to hold onto. Then it stops. It’s a cliche birdsong morning moment. The echoes of thunder still rolling around my skull, the cries of the wounded and maimed begin a chorus over the muddied fields and it’s a dilemma about whether I should go and help the moaning man that’s neaest me. Thoughts well up about what sort of state he might be in. I rasie the tin hat on the machine gun above the top of my dug out and a shell speeds by, obviously they’ve got my range. I yell out to the wounded compatriot to find out what’s wrong, but no repsonse. I’m leaving it for now, no room for heroics here, just slaughter and legitimised murder…. in the name of what?
Pull down some rations from my soaking pack, chewing on a strip of beef jerky, smoky, woody, tough. I’m growing restless, again with the helmet no response, It’ll have to wait ’til nightfall, hope he can hold on ’til then. The wind begins to blow, cutting right through the light clothing we’ve been issued with, it’s crawling over my dermis like maggots over rotting meat sending probes down to the bone which ache as if they’ve been hit with a hammer, pulsing with each heartbeat making me feel rotten to the core.
