Emmetsburg:Thirty-five

Cold gray. The morning sun was somewhere beyond the shroud of fog turning the tortured no man's land into an abstract of ghostly silhouettes. The bullet and shell-stripped hulks of trees reached out as strange creatures among tangles of rusted concertina wire. The ground was tossed by overlapping shell craters, fading to a broken horizon and the German lines hidden behind that merciless fog.

The fog brought a silence, like that of a funeral. It was the silence of loss and exhaustion and of loneliness; a void in which all things once believed clear and immovable where now d ark and uncertain. The scent of death was in the air, but it was a different evolving scent from the strangling putrefying stink of the recently killed. It was a musty scent, not unlike upturned moss, wet earth and sickness. Bodies not collected or claimed, and those beyond collection were being reclaimed by the earth. Bodies not picked over by rats appeared as poorly conceived mud sculptures blending with the French soil.

Still groggy from a cold uncomfortable sleep, curled with his Enfield upon a stack of ammunition crates, John climbed from the trench. He stood straight for a moment, as if tempting German snipers. They couldn't see him, lost to the fog as they were, but the nature of trench warfare was not tactics or strategy, but simple survival. A cough, a sneeze, any errant sound could bring a brutalizing reply from German gunners who were every bit as jumpy and frightened as their allied counterparts.

The khaki-green wool uniform was filthy, blood-stained and damp from the morning dew. It stunk of the dead, of piss and shit, wood smoke and goat meat they'd cooked the night before. It hung loosely on John's gaunt frame. Four exhaustive months and successive bouts of dysentery and diarrhea had taken a terrible toll. Like the dead, he felt himself disappearing steadily from the world. John lifted the Enfield to his chest, unconsciously gripping the cold wooden stock hard enough to cramp his fingers.

John glanced back into the trench, and the five expectant faces of his squad. One of them was a tough as nails Irishman named Roddy MacAllister, with thick bright red hair and deep blue eyes. John thought he was a bit of a loud mouth, but he was keen with a knife and a good man in a fight. When John was asked by the Sergeant to pick his squad, Roddy was the first on the list. John nodded and the men rose quick and quiet. Without a word they formed a skirmish line, separated by three yard intervals. From where John stood the last man was almost lost to the swirling mist.

The mission was as much one of security as revenge. German sappers had cut the throat of a French sentry that night before beheading two of the sentry's sleeping comrades. The objective was to sweep the area between the lines, but each man entertained his own fantasy of what he might do should they run into the enemy. The squad drew a long slow arc that would take them mere yards from the German guns before turning back towards friendly lines.

They went cautiously, rifles at the shoulder, barrels angled towards the ground. To John it remind him of stories of the Indian Wars he’d heard from old veterans as a child. Like those Indians John stepped lightly at the edge of his foot, judiciously choosing each footfall, sliding forward to make as little noise as possible. His finger hovered across the iron trigger guard. John had to remind himself to breathe from time to time. Every eight steps the squad came to a halt and knelt, looking back along the line for John’s signal to push forward.

They were near enough the enemy lines that John could faintly make out a German soldier's snoring as he slept. It made him smile, breaking a strain that grew exponentially by the second. The sound tore at his conscience. It was upsetting to think the enemy was a man like him. John brushed away the thought, content that the wind, light as it was, was in the American's favor. Roddy heard it as well and smirked in John's direction. John pursed his lips and with a wave of the hand motioned the squad forward again.

Nearing the German lines John spied movement at the edge of a crater a grenade throw away.. Roddy came up beside him. He'd spotted it as well. As if by one mind they separated, intending to flank their prey from either side. Ten yards out both men rose, aiming their rifles from the shoulder as they closed the gap. John was there first, taken suddenly aback by the unexpected sight.

It was a young blond German boy, fighting to drag himself to the lip of the crater. His blue-gray uniform was in tatters and scorched on one side. Blood had matted and darkened along the back of his neck and into the neatly trimmed blond hair. The boy’s legs were gone below the knees. He turned slowly and peered over one shoulder at John, his eyes wide with fear. With that he only pulled more desperately at earth that slithered through his fingers.

At the edge of the crater, opposite the struggling boy, John lowered his rifle to watch the pathetic spectacle. He took a breath and guessed the wounds were more than a day old. It was quite certain he wasn't one of the sappers. John figured he'd been left behind from a half hearted assault two nights before that had been stopped cold by an artillery barrage. A few feet away Roddy smiled cryptically, and drew a trench knife from his belt. John scrambled down the side of the crater stopping Roddy just as he was about to dispatch the boy.

“What's the matter with you?” Roddy complained, at barely a whisper. The two men struggled. Roddy fought to pull free, staring into John’s eyes., grimacing as John forced the knife from his hand. Neither of them noticied as the boy reached the top of the crater.

“Deutsche Comrade!” he cried. Roddy shoved John away and dove on the boy just as a burst of machinegun fire erupted from the German side. John slipped and tumbled awkwardly, splashing into a pool of water at the bottom of the crater. The boy's head exploded. Another round banged off Roddy's dough boy helmet, flinging him into a heap across the trench. John crawled over, bullets ripping at the air above the trench, and turned Roddy over. He was limp. A trickle of blood ran from one ear and down across his dirt streaked neck.