Up Above

Up above, an entirely different scene was raging. Corpses littered the boggy earth; figures almost unrecognizable due to the gravity of their injuries. Then there were the unlucky few; those who had fallen yet still clung vainly to life, their hope slowly ebbing as their bodies did, deeper and deeper into the dark marshy abyss.

An officer barked hoarsely over the Swanee whistle tones and the cries of bewildered men. Both sides were engaged in a furious dialogue; curt retorts flew whispered across the mire, a dull thud resounding as they were received. Scythe-swathes of dismayed troops clambered gingerly over barbed-wire obstacles and former comrades, desperate to reach the end of no-man’s land.

“Masks! Get your fucking masks on!”

The inky death glided forward across the trenches; a suffocating blanket of hopelessness and vain scrambling for objects inaccessible.Soon silence would finally return, bringing with it a nauseating pause before the next inevitable conflict began.