Where Death Sings

four // friedhelm

I crawl out from the small dugout, which has been my protection for the last couple of hours. For hours I have been sitting there shivering, and listening to what is going on above our heads. I wish I could say that the dugout gave me the chance to escape the cold, but the earth surrounding us was damp and provided little heat. In fact, the environment inside the dugouts are not too different to the environment outside of it. At least not the shallow ones.

   I push myself up from the ground and wipe off my hands on my uniform trousers before I, in a hunched position, make my way down the trenches until I reach Johann. I give him a pat on the back, which he responses to by spinning around and aiming his gun at me.

   "It's me." I say, and raise my hands. "Friedhelm." *

   Johann lowers his gun, and I can't help but laugh shortly.

   "Did they not tell you that you're supposed to shoot Tommies, and not your goddamn comrades, huh?" I say.

   "Sorry, Friedhelm." Johann replies.

   Johann is one of the replacements placed in our company a week ago. He had proudly walked over to me and some other soldiers and introduced himself as Johann Baumer, which had been followed by me punching him in the face.

   I had later taken him aside and explained that I, and probably no one else, wanted to know his name. Too many men have had their names put on my list over dead comrades. I don't need any more names to put on that list, especially not someone like him, not when they tend to die first. The new recruits, the young boys who fill out the holes in the company lack the training and experience to last very long in the tranches; five to ten die to every experience soldier. If they manage to survive their first couple of weeks in the trenches, they may tell me their names.

   "Don't worry" I say. "I'm here to relieve you, go get something to eat."

   Johann steps down from his post, and as I take his place on the elevated step and peer out into no man's land I can her Johann's heavy steps as he leaves.

   I put my rifle in position before I look over my shoulder and watch Johann stumble through the soft and wet ground in the trench.

   "Johann, keep your head down." I shout.

   The young boy turns around and looks at me, giving me a small nod. The next second his body is tossed to the side due to the impact of a bullet. His small body slides down the side of the trench and collapses onto the ground. I curse under my breath and step down from my post before hurrying over to Johann.

   I kneel next to the young soldier. His blue eyes are blankly staring up at the grey sky, and his lips are slightly parted as if he was about to say something or was in the middle of taking his last breath when he got shot.

   The blood oozing out from two wounds on each side of his head has already darkened his uniform and the earth beneath him. He was dead before he reached the ground, he probably didn't even have time to realise that he was dying. Instead he was unaware as he was pulled into an abyss of darkness and death. You could almost say that it was a lucky death; he didn't feel any pain and he will be buried next to other German soldiers who suffered the same fate as him. He's not one of the many soldiers we've had to leave. Countless of soldiers have been left in no man's land, too far away for us to retrieve them. Some of the men we leave are not even dead, although they soon will be. They will cry out for help that won't come, and stare up at the sky for hours or days before they get buried by grenades and shellfire.

   I have seen a lot of soldiers like Johann. Fresh out of training, sent to the front with nowhere near the experience and knowledge they need. They are thrown into a kind of violence that they are not ready for, without knowing how to take cover or how to orientate through the terrain.

   Too often we find them curled up, shaking, in a corner with pale faces and big eyes. Yet they are forced into attacks, only to be too frightened to cry out when they get wounded. With battered chests, and with arms and legs torn off, they softly whisper for the mothers before Death comes to take them from this hell.

   I give Johann one last look before I return to my post with a new name on my list. I put my rifle in position once again, and stare out into the land of scarred earth in front of me. Somewhere on the other side there might be an English soldier doing the same, a man who probably feel the heavy burden of the war just as much as I do. He has probably pressed his body to the ground, unable to move, while our shells have exploded around him, and his list of names is probably just as long as mine. And maybe he is staring at the same land of scarred earth as I am, and wonders how many men I have been forced to leave behind only to be swallowed by the wet and bleeding earth.

   I spot a dead soldier. His uniform tells me that he is English. His body lies tangled up in barbed wire, with his cheek resting against a pile of dirt. I wonder what the last thing he saw was, was it our trenches or the dull ground, or had he managed to give the sky one last look before he escaped the front and the trenches.

   If I die in the trenches, I would like the sky to be that last thing I see. It seems like the sky is the only thing around here not involved with the violence of the war. A good friend of mine, who seems to be able to provide me with some calmness when I need it. Every night it wraps itself around the earth and trenches like a dark blue blanket, and every morning it reminds me that I am still alive.

   If the sky is the last thing I see, then maybe dying won't be so horrible.  

* The german soldiers speak german with each other, but I don't speak german that's why it's in english.