The Stranger I Loved

1917 - The Western Front

1917

He could smell the death. Had smelt it for months. The scent of blood was what he knew like nothing else, but it still never replaced the smell of fear.

Should a man be fearful? A man fighting for his country. For his men. For a war he had enlisted into upon his own accord. He would have done anything to be away from his own tormented life. Five years were too long to be alone and tortured by one's own memories and so he replaced one misery with another. He became a soldier. At twenty-five years old, he had shot a gun for the first time in his life. He had ended lives. Pointlessly. Mercilessly. The men he had killed were no doubt fathers, brothers, sons and husbands. They would have been a friend. A lover. An employer. Someone would have written them letters and carried their pictures. But he had no one. Not a soul. He was an orphan. Never married. No children. No one. Nothing. Not a single flicker of hope.

The war had raged on but it still never plagued his dreams like she did. That one vision that was instilled inside his mind. Loneliness had wounded him, daily and dragging out his life like one endless torture after the next.

Just end me...

Kill me.

Take me away from this world.

Then he had taken a bullet to the leg, that had been removed easily and he was sent back to the front line. He had killed more men. Laid with their bodies. Drank with the enemy. Played cards with them. Laughed with them like they were brothers. Come daylight, the war would rage on. It was already too late. The front line was ablaze with torture, death and the scent of it all. He stood in the trench he was laid in most nights. The bottom was muddy and he almost sank into it as he attempted to walk through it. The rain filled up the trench and water seeped in through the sides, leaving the troops up to their knees in thick, stinking mud that made any movement difficult. There was no sanitation and rats were a problem. Diseases were rife, such as dysentery and trench foot, but somehow, he had managed to avoid each and every single one of them, instead seeing others suffer.

He had stopped praying a long time ago. He asked for this hell, but he never wished for himself to be spared but for the others. It was useless...millions had died. More would. It would never end this great war. In time, he had thawed. Troops became his friends. The nights sky although filled with the souls of the beautiful, was lovely to see once more. The stars would shine for them, the moon sometimes guided light. The soldiers, they sang sometimes after a drink or two. The songs would lull him to sleep. For the first time, he didn't feel lonely—almost. Sleep was where they were together...him and her. Red. She always wore red, like her hair and those lips and like—blood. She never bled for him. She had died though...

No name on the list. He had slipped out of consciousness clinging to her hand and then, she was gone. To where? That was the gut-wrenching problem. He never knew. Perhaps she drowned. Perhaps she had left to find help but could never return. Absolution was never offered. Absolution had driven him to drink. To hatred. To anger. No other woman would touch him and nor he them. She was all that mattered. He never spoke her name for it was painful, agony, excruciating and that was when the war had been his only saviour.

Time went on, he would feel lucky. Even happy. Fighting was a distraction from his own misery and if God wasn't ready to take him just yet, then at least he was fighting for his country. He was doing good. He was—existing. It was enough for him. Time was ticking but barely much time to think of her, aside from when night time fell. The stench of death became the norm. The bodies and blood became the norm. Hell because normal. It was all just, well, normal.

It was nine months later when things went horribly wrong. The day had started out as usual for him, two days after his twenty sixth birthday. The loud, heavy sounds of explosions and gunfire blasted across the land. The battle still raged heavily on this, the last day of April. He had gone about the day as usual. It was at mid-morning that things suddenly changed. There had been a lull in the sounds of fighting from the trenches, followed by a series of explosions. The day was clear and still, allowing the sounds to carry for miles, right up into town.