Where Death Sings

three // william

I walk into the town square with my head hanging low. I'm exhausted, so extremely exhausted. And I'm tired, and hungry. The last couple of days have been tough. We must have lost half the company in the last offensive the Germans launched yesterday and in the bombardment that hit us when we were on our way back from the front, back to safety.

   For a minute, I think we all felt safe behind the front. After the week's deaths, we just wanted to be able to take a breath of relief as we all knew that we were leaving the trenches. And for a few seconds we felt remotely safe where we were walking away from the front. The feeling of safety vanished at the scream of the first shell, the ear-piercing sound that indicated what was about to happen. It's a scream that makes your body throw itself, instinctively, down to the ground and wait for Death to come; to either take you or one of your comrades.

   In moments like those you can't help but to feel helpless. As you lie awaiting your possible death, you know that there is nothing you can do to change or affect what is happening. You cannot affect a shell or where it lands, or who gets killed in the explosion.

   If it's to any consolation, when you lie curled up in a crater, it's that a shell rarely lands in the exact same place twice.

   We never stood a chance in that open field. And when the shells finally stopped falling around us like rain during an autumn day, the field, that just a while ago had been green, had been left as a wasteland adorn with dead soldier and bloody limbs.

   Now my body aches. It aches after the long tough days in the trenches, and after lying convulsively on the cold wet ground for what felt like hours during the bombardment. Whenever one of my feet touch the hard ground beneath me pain shoots through my muscles. Every part of me hurts, even my mind and soul hurts, but I am not wounded. I'm fine, even though I don't feel it. I am not dead, maybe that's how I should describe my well-being. I was not blown to bits and pieces. I was not shot. And my dead body will not be lowered into the ground, at least not yet.

   I want to say that I can't complain, but neither can George Young and Percy Ford or everyone else who died.

Just as I am about to turn right and head down the street leading to the canteen set up in one of the empty houses I spot something in the corners of my eyes. I immediately fall out of line and let my glace wander over to the fountain in the middle of the square. A young women, dressed as a nurse, is sitting on the ground. Her hands lie intertwined on edge of the fountain and her head is hanging between her outstretch arms. From afar it looks as if she is praying, but as I come closer I see the uneven and uncontrolled movement of her upper body. She's not praying, she's crying; immersed in pain and sorrow.

   I slowly haunch down next to the women, my eyes resting on the surface beneath her hands; it has been colour red by the blood on her hands.

   I don't say anything. I'm not quite sure what I can possible say to make her feel better, because I know that no words are enough to relieve the pain caused by the war. Although she hasn't been at the front, I am sure she has seen just as much violence as me, enough to fill every night for the rest of our lives with nightmares.

   The nurse must have sensed my presence. She slowly moves her head to the side, her blue eyes looking straight at me. Her fair skin is stained with tears, and I feel a sudden urge to wipe her cheeks clean, but my hands will just replace the tears with dirt, and my uniform is even dirtier than my skin. So I resist the urge to wipe away her tears, and observe her face instead.

   The nurse is very young, probably the youngest nurse I have seen during the war. Her blue eyes are filled with sadness and exhaustion, making me wonder when she last got a good night sleep. Her dark hair has been pulled back from her face, but a few strands of hair has escaped the pins and is now framing her face.

   "What's your name?" I carefully ask.

   "Astrid." The nurse replies.

   "Are you okay, Astrid?"

   "Mhm, yeah." She replies quietly and pushes herself up from the ground. I follow her lead.

   I see how she turns her gaze to the church, and a shiver travels through her body. It could easily be the cold rain and her wet uniform, but it could just as easily be the memory of what she has seen in the church that makes her shiver.

   "I should get back." Astrid says before she turns her full attention to me. "Are you alright? Are you wounded?"

   "I'm fine." I say. "But let me walk you back to the church."

   Astrid gives me a nod and a small smile as we turn and start walking towards the monumental building in front of us. We walk in silence, but as we walk I can't help but let my eyes rest on Astrid's profile. With ever step we take it seems as if something changes about her, the same way we, soldiers, change before an attack. The church must be her battlefield. It requires all her concentration and focus. I can't help but admire her for willingly walking straight back to her own hell, a church full of agony and blood.

   We stop outside the wooden doors.

   "You don't have to go any further." Astrid says, and smiles reassuring. It's as if she doesn't want me to experience the horrid scenes that take place behind the doors, but I have already spent too many sorrowful hours in there. I have said goodbye to a lot of good men in there, and I have friends in there right now. I would prefer to never have to set my foot in the church every again, to never have to listen to the cries of wounded soldiers, but you don't leave your friends to die a slow and painful death when they probably would have preferred a swift and painless one; because if our fate is to die, we all wish it to be as quick as possible even if that means no goodbyes.

   "Yes, I do." I say.