Here are several posts that I mentioned recently from a couple years ago. These are the Great War Short Stories that I've mentioned that I've written that are actually straight up recollections from my boyhood dreams. I went back and located them and am going to share them here in one long post. The originals had images but they did not transfer well so I am going to them this without the original photos. You can search for the title of each post and it will take you back to the original.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2010
It's
cold, very cold and my body hurts all over. I cannot see
much....visibility is limited by the fact it's pre-dawn and I'm cuddled
round a corpse in a half frozen shell hole, reeking of rot and Mustard
Gas. It is so quiet.....that at this moment that very silence seems deafening.
Then I hear the thumping of my own heart.....well I'm pretty
sure it's my heart beating hard and not the heart of a German corpse I've
been sharing this hole with since the shelling started. I have no idea where
the rest of my patrol is.....out here somewhere I suppose though I haven't a
clue if any of them is still living or not. I mustn't shout out....I need to
be...silent, still, alive.
The shelling had gone on for 3 or 4 minutes or so but God it
seemed like a fucking eternity. Now in it's aftermath I can't focus. My
soul has been knocked out of kilter and my brain is scrambled. I see
only brief images, in my mind, smoke going by, flickers of movement...light in
the darkness. But I begin to think my friend the corpse (I allow that now he is
dead that he isn't really a German, or an English or Frenchmen for that
matter....he is just another rotting corpse now, in the end.) I feel wet
all over but the warm wetness in my crotch suggests that I pissed myself during
the shelling....It doesn't matter really, it isn't the first time. I'm
just grateful to be alive to notice.
As the minutes pass, sound comes back to me. Some where south of
High Wood is the crump, crump of distant shelling impacting the sodden ground.
I keep hearing a whistle, chirping in the night until i realize it's just my
ears continuing to ring. I'm hungry, confused and I have to shit but I don't
dare give my position away...I can hold it though it's mostly liquid and will
leak out if I don't find away to....voices, several voices from out there. What
language? German...a patrol? I pull a Mills Bomb out and wait....they are no
longer speaking but I here the squish/crunch of boots breaking the semi-frozen
mud....and then nothing.
I begin to move...west, south west back to the line. Never
standing, crawling, hunched walking just a step or two at a time...connecting
shell hole to shell hole. Since the lines haven't really moved much in the last
several months rare is the shell hole out here that isn't occupied by the dead
or pieces of the dead. Hollow empty eyes, pleading for...what? Their mums
maybe? The silence, deafening silence has returned and every step I make seems
like an explosion of sound then...a whisper. Sgt Millar...the patrol or what's
left of them have gathered in this collapsed outpost with the dead and the rats
as well. Seems three of our patrol took a direct hit. The Sgt. believes we were
unlucky in moving into an area scheduled for a pre-planned sporadic
box-barrage...non of us detected any movement from the German trenches though
we never really got close, not even to the wire before the shelling dispersed
us. The Germans routinely follow pre-planned barrages with a follow up patrol
which all of us managed to avoid.
Corporal Lakey took some shell fragments to the face and
left shoulder but can walk with help. Adams legs are mangled and we carry him
back to the trench....Smithy crawls forward to alert the sentries that we are
coming in. The trench line further south took a beating from the shells and
they have casualties as well. The Captain meets us as we come in and seems less
then pleased that we didn't at least get a look at Fritz's wire and hardly
reacts when informed of our dead and wounded. As we move quickly down the line
to a reserve trench our mates pat us lightly as we pass....we have all been out
there...outside the wire.
By Thomas O Davis
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2010
It's hot...the dust from the road rises in a light brown cloud
covering everyone and everything. This includes my eyes....in my mouth, my
nose, ears..my brain. Yes, it invades my every thought, it holds me, suffocates
me. Water is a most valuable item right now. Every break in the march brings an
urgent search for water.
The scene is one of controlled chaos...horses, wagons, men, mules.
Every kind of imaginable transport moving all at once...mostly, to the East.
Long lines of men on the march...as far as the eye can see. The very air
contains an urgency hard to explain.
Perhaps all these visual distractions are a good thing. They keep
us occupied, to busy to ponder what this may all mean to us. Because deep down
we know...an advance. An attack, a full scale attack on the German main
line somewhere...to the East. And soon, very soon.The Germans know it to...their
aircraft are very active above us. Our aircraft are active as well trying to
prevent them from observing what is happening in our rear.
The sound of the men marching, the horses, motorized transport,
teamsters cursing, officers shouting, men singing....creates a symphony all
it's own. A soundtrack, "The Prelude to Hell..." perhaps. The entire
scene...sound, the sight, the smell it...energizes, lifts us up to another
place. Prepares us for what is next. Or maybe it doesn't.....
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2010
Suffice it to say that it is no longer hot and dry....it is now just wet, very
wet. The dry weather gave way to torrential rains two days after the Big Push
began. Some one in the Heavens must have a sickened sense of humor because
just as we were gaining some headway in breaking the German lines...the rains
came and everything slogged to a standstill. Now both sides are digging deep
again.
Not that things were going really well before the rain......every single
yard we gained was paid for in blood...our blood. Fritz did not want to give up
that series of trench-lines and out posts. There would be a short, vicious
bombardment of their line and then we'd rush the trench...hurling Mills Bombs
as we jumped into the front line. Any survivors we shot or ran them through
with our bayonets. No quarter...no mercy...a nightmarish fury of shooting,
stabbing, punching, kicking, screaming horror...then, it was quiet. After a
short while, the Germans would shell us, counter-attack and the furious hand to
hand combat would begin all over again. We would go back and forth like this,
hour after hour...day into night. I thought it would never end.
And then we began to hold...and the counter-attacks weakened, then stopped.
We started to advance a few hundred yards at a time. Word was that the Front
Line had been broken a couple miles to the south and the Hun were in retreat.
We almost began to have hope again...hope that maybe, just maybe, this time,
this nightmare, this war might end. We could push the enemy, pursue them,
destroy them and maybe, just maybe end the war. For the first time in years we
were in open country and on the move. Then the Germans turned back to fight, to
hold their ground. And the advances started to slow...to a crawl.
We
continued to attack, hour after hour with minor, insignificant little gains, an
advance of a hundred yards here....200 yards there. But the casualties were
incredibly high...then the rains came. And every movement and everything just
stopped, bogged down in deep mud, mired in a land torn and shredded by
incessant shellfire. Moving forward was out of the question though for awhile,
orders to continue the attack were given until the slaughter...our slaughter
became so great that there were not enough men left in the Division to
continue. We had become a Ghost Division. So we waited for our relief and dug
in as best we could in the heavy rain and prayed for someone,
anyone to have mercy on us.....
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010
I'm here still, I think. The sound, the noise is incredible...I
can't hear myself think. I realize the funny taste in my mouth is...dirt. The
last series of bombs from Fritz blew in part of the trench block and buried
several fellows alive...including me. From the noise, the incredible fury of
sound I realize that the fight is still on. The incessant hammering of rifle
fire, bombs going off one after the other...a mixture of other sound, human
made sounds..shouts, screams, the yelling, crying....
I shrug off the last of the dirt and push through the destroyed
block to find myself alone...where are my Pals? Through the haze of smoke in
the last light of day I begin to see snippets of images....a body here,German,
unmoving...a man, one of ours on his knees, struggling to crawl away..with an
arm missing, marking his path with blood. Now many corpses litter the remains
of the trench floor, I move cautiously round a bend in the trench and I'm face
to face with my enemy. I see him first, run him through the throat and he
remains standing, frozen in time with a silent scream staring intently back at
the man who just killed him. After a while of gazing back into the dead mans
eyes, I remove the bayonet, he crumples to the ground. I stick him again, then
again....dead. I pause, take a deep breath then begin to move again down the
trench only to deflect a swinging trench shovel w/the butt of my rifle at the
last second. Shouts from behind as lads from 3rd Welsh Fusiliers come up, over
and through the broken and battered trench block. The Welsh lay down a sheet of
rifle fire and a barrage of bombs on the next series of strong-points in the
trench system. The German with the shovel dies in the onslaught. Systematically
they bomb there way down the trench, eliminating dug outs and surviving Germans
as they go. As quickly as the appeared, they were gone, lost in the smoke, lost
in time like ghosts from Hell or Avenging Angels....
A cold shiver passes through me as I struggle to remain standing.
I am confused by my weakness until stretcher bearers come through....In the
chaotic confusion of the fight I failed to realize I'd been shot through the
left thigh and am now missing parts of two fingers on my right hand. Seems it
was my hand on the rifle butt that deflected the Hun shovel..
Suddenly
I see a man from the Medical Corps, his face right in front of me and he is
talking, his lips move but I don't understand what he is saying. It doesn't
make any sense to me then I realize that I feel faint. With much help I am moved
back through the trench we have just taken from Fritz. I can't begin to
describe the horror of what I see: a private window into a small piece of the
underworld. Bodies, parts of bodies, once human gobs of goo, chunks of stuff
along with equipment strewn everywhere. In a large junction of several trench
avenues I wait with other wounded to be moved back, behind the line to receive
medical attention. I lay on the cold, hard packed dirt of the trench and slowly
the intense noise of the previous hours begins to fade. I relax, I urinate
where I lie but I feel OK yet I swear I hear a familiar voice...soft,
comforting...Is it, no!? How can that be?...it is my Mother.
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