Title: The hypocracy of war
by Olivia from Northern Ireland | in writing, fiction
The hypocricy of War I walk along the white rows tainted by the blood red blooms, strung on crude, plastic crosses, the garish garlands and the chatoyant quartz, dyed ribbons that ornament them. The long, strained path leading to the long remembered sepulchre, the subject of a thousand dreams and nightmares. The cold, harsh sunlight licked the nape of my neck and scolded my eyes. The great expanse of country that surrounded this 'quaint' necropolis was simply astounding. This land that had been so ravaged by death and enmity, once a battlefield, now a crypt. The innocuous bodies lie under ominous 'pierre tombales'.
Here I stand in Flanders fields, at my feet my once cherished friend, now a cherished memory.
As I look to the callous, cold beyond, the once solitary sky and the shrieking cry of the guns, heralding yet another angel, condemned to the heavens.
* * *
No bird chants at this, the coming of spring, in Flanders Fields. Not an angel sings, they only weep. Only the hellish drilling of bullets and the putrescent stench of comrades, long dead, that have touched my eyes and ears all these many days I have been away. Never in these skies have the stars shone, since I've been away, my dear, for even the clouds have turned to smothering them. The gibbering of boys lost in their thoughts of slumber and rations. With pallid faces and haggard hands, they grip their meagre tin to their breast, full of solemn happiness. We were among these children of War. Mere boys we clasped rifles, strong to our sides, ready for any German boy that dared fall into our trench. Simon was among these. The daily struggle with the terrors of the mud and that terrible cold sometimes blocked out the sensations of intense hunger and the forever present threat of death. Sometimes.
The shuddering of shells and the shrieking of men in shocked glory, often stir me from devilish reverie. Every day plagues me with yet more dread and inevitable boredom. The frequent lice that I found in my bed brought much sought after amusement. If I was not on duty I would catch a few and try to teach them tricks.
We learnt the date that we had to go over the line that Sunday. November 15. It was a Monday. Simon and I were placed alongside each other in alphabetical order, so we would be going over the top together. We would be going over that Monday.
* * *
I remember.
With my wreath in my withered hands and my eyes glazed by the spoiling of time and the guilt of the years, I shall remember him.
* * *
I was in pure, bloody terror. As night shattered into day, I feared for my life. Oh, how I feared! As I haul my sodden trousers over my once nubile limbs, my only puerile thoughts were that of fear and repulsion. I embrace my rifle and I say my prayers. I was the last left in the dug-out. I enter to the sight of shivering souls, blood-shod and hunched over in paranoia. Their eyes wide with horror and expectancy, they stared at me, seeking solicitude. Boys, naive and drunk with the honour promised with War. Now they were promised the terror brought with War.
I was startled by the sudden sound of a man retching. The waste came from the bottom of his stomach in a terrible, nauseating way.
I sat. Clearing my mind of any feeling or emotion, I sat void and still.
The orders came to get ready. 5 minutes left.
I stood and I waited.
Everybody lined up in ordered lines according to surnames. The cold irony, that we should die in order of alphabetical accuracy.
Simon lined up, gun in tow, close to my side. Although many were weeping, he was emotionless and dry. He had a wife and children, two boys, and yet he seemed to feel nothing.
A shriek of a whistle sounded and we were commanded over.
I faced forward, braced myself and jumped.
This was a barren wasteland of hard, stiff bodies. A littered expanse of flesh. The dead smiling as if in anguished disguise, their arms savagely reaching to the sky, twisted forever in this melancholy pose, squalid and bloodless.
The barbed wire grasped at my feet and legs, like Hellenistic tendons, dragging me to Hell. Bullets rained down on my comrades. Like the precision of War, they hit their intended victims. Their writhing eyes and their blood corrupted faces were that of a child's. We plundered on, too scared to turn back yet too scared to go on.
And then he was shot down.
A hell raising scream penetrated my head. I turned around and I caught him in my grasping embrace. His blood was gripping to my clothes, his tarnished clothing fresh and warm with his own precious blood. He was dead the moment he hit my arms, yet I dragged his body back up to the line. Desperately seeking to shirk the bullets that so desperately wanted me dead, I fled.
Although I hadn't known him well, I was proud that I had saved him from that so shameful of resting places as Flanders Fields.
He rests now, while I walk among these graves. Some are unknown, others unlamented, but all shall be remembered, I lay the wreath down on his immortal resting place, and I leave those hellish ashen tombs. Here, in Flanders Fields.
The 90 year anniversary of Armistace Day in World War I.
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