He relaxed against the side of the cramped, dirty cubbyhole, to the soothing sounds of rifles in the distance, and drank away the fear with his hip flask.  Johnny had got his gun a while back. He wished he never had.

This muddy little cubbyhole had taken him a while to make, but he was glad he did. It was a nice place to wait out the war. It was a short oval hole in the side of the trench, dug out from the earth and supported by wooden posts, barely tall enough to kneel in. It was carpeted in cold clammy mud that stuck to his boots constantly. It was cramped as hell with his dirty bedroll, his little table, his antique radio, his favourite green camping chair and his gun, lying discarded in the corner, along with all the rest of his military garb.

Out here in the corner of the furthest trench, no officers ever came knocking, or maybe they did, but not often. Line hadn’t moved either. Lucky.

Life was looking up.

Just then the radio crackled to life. “Bravo Company, you have new orders. Report to Trench Alpha.”<--they don’t call out like this, do they?

Fuck

.

Johnny held his head in his hands. Fuck. He had thought it wouldn’t move till over two months. After his tour was over. He drank heavily from his hipflask, and when it was empty he chucked it against the wall, the shiny metal canister clattering against the table before landing in the mud, the last drops of vodka dripping out.

Can’t run, they’ll catch me. There are too many outposts.

Johnny walked over to his gun, and picked it up.

It was an old Lee Enfield rifle, oak stock gleaming, and barrel clean. He had to  wash and polish it everyday after breakfast, something which he reluctantly attended. He had only used it at boot camp and never thereafter.

It would have to be used today.

He sighed and slung it over his back, along with an entrenching tool and a knife, and crept out into the daylight, blinking slightly. It was a bright clear day, the sky azure, and sun brilliant. The brownish trench in which he stood, the walls just above his head , continued on zigzagging a kilometer to the left, and stopped dead to the right. Few other soldiers were nearby, trudging along towards the middle of the trench, disappearing behind a bend in the trench.

Johnny trudged on behind, walking the long way to the command center.

As he walked he regretted his life choices, chief among them the decision to not buy another bottle of vodka. He needed something to forget what he was going towards. He didn't want to die yet.

After what seemed like endless walking through gray mud, he reached the middle. There was an entire division of soldiers there, with more just out of sight, listless and cramped together in the narrow trench, around a person in colourful garb in the middle. The commander. He was shouting something about honour, and dying for your country. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori and all that jazz. Johnny had seen the fault in that right away. What use do the dead have for honour? Or glory? Or even a country? They’re dead. They’ve faded away. They’ve gone on to oblivion. Self-sacrifice is only useful to the living.

Only useful knowledge in his drivel was the part about the machine guns they were charging. There were 2 of them. They fired 200 rounds a minute. And were manned by a crew of about 5 each, with a division of soldiers protecting them. Johnny wondered how many soldiers were being sent on this charge. He could only see about 500. He hoped to all gods past, present and future, that there were more. Otherwise he’d have to finish his will in the next few minutes. The commander stopped talking and the men got into their position, crouched like brown roaches along the lip of the cramped mud trench.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Rifles were still spluttering their death knells in the distance. Johnny was terrified, lying against the wall at the bend of the trench. The black mud was cold, and the rocks dug into his stomach. His gun felt heavy on his hands, and the entrenching tool was scratching his torso. The grey barbed wire on top of the wall of the trench flashed in the sunlight, and somewhere far away a bird crowed. The commander was in the middle of the soldiers, as silent as the rest, his face a mask of neutrality.

Johnny wanted to shit himself, wanted to move, wanted to get the fuck out. He squirmed slightly, digging himself in the mud, and raised his head slightly, looking over the line of soldiers towards the commander. He was whispering to the soldier next to him, who looked very scared. Probably telling him to run ahead.

The mud started seeping into Johnny’s boots, and suddenly he just couldn’t take anymore. He kept imagining his guts spraying out on the ground, the blood seeping out as he desperately tried to stuff it back in, his vision darkening, and himself fading away into oblivion, never to return.

Johnny lept up and started sprinting for the bend, mud flying and splattering the soldiers. He had to get out fast.

A shot rang out, smashed into the bend in front of johnny, sending dirt flying and he desperately backtracked, sliding in the slippery mud, his gun smacking against his head, and barely managed to stop at the wall, before collapsing on his ass.

He clambered to his feet, and, readying his rifle, turned to point it at who shot him. It was the commander standing in the middle of all the soldiers, every one of whom was staring at him with an indescribable expression. The hand cannon held by the commander was pointed directly at Johnny. The barrel was big, black and slightly smoking. The commander stood arm outstretched, hat down, only his eyes visible behind his high collar.

“Get back in line.” he said, with a voice promising destruction, without tone nor inflection.

Johnny shouted back, ”Sir, with all due respect, why?”

“Get back in line or die. I give you 10  second before I splatter your brains across the wall.” The commander raised his face. It was affixed in a grimace, meant to be a smile.

Johnny stared at the gun. The commander cocked it. Johnny sprang to attention and said, “Sir, yes sir!” and ran back to his position, diving into the dirt. The lovely non-killing dirt.

The commander followed suit, although with slightly less momentum.

There was a pause. The sun shined brightly, upon the soldiers lying at the lipp of the trench and even the rifles in the distance had stopped firing. Everything was silent. Johnny shifted slightly, looking again at the commander. He looked back, and Johnny hurriedly buried his head in the dirt.

The commander raised his fist in the air and shook it, his bright red sleeve falling back to reveal a pasty boney arm.

“Men, charge!” the commander shouted at the top of his lungs.

With that he leaped to his feet and clambered over the trench and started sprinting to the backtrack of a hail of bullets.

Everybody else followed, screaming and charging as they leapt the lip of the trench and charged over the no man’s land, a short absolutely blasted brown stretch of dirt, beyond which sitting between two manmade mountains, in the middle of a long trench, lurked two machine gun emplacements, flashing brighter than the sun as they sung their sweet song of death.

Except Johnny. He waited a few moments lying in the dirt, face down, listening as screams of battle turned to screams of pain. The machine gun kept rattlin. He couldn’t see a thing, his eyes closed, the cold mud pressing against his face. He couldn't think, just lie there and listen. Listen how the wounded scream, the commander’s voice, he somehow still not dead, echoing above the rest urging them on forward, the hoarse screams of soldiers, the clatter of rifles, the boom of mortar shells. He started to cry.

Then the commander’s voice started screaming, screaming in pain, and the few remaining battle cries soon joined. There was no more sound of the charge. Only the sound of the wounded, moaning and screaming in pain, as they tried to call out for help, any help, only to be met with fellow screams, and the clatter of bullets. Johnny burrowed into the dirt, and waited, waited for the screams to die down.

After a while, they did.

There was no sound.

Even the birds were silent.

Johnny slowly lifted his head, caked with mud, from the side of the trench, and slowly crawled forward, peering over the side. He saw a field clogged with corpses blown apart by shells, and bullets. A field more plowed then any farm. A bloodfield, no longer a battlefield. Here and there there were still wounded shifting slightly. Or was that his imagination? He smelled blood, and gore, and shit, the smoke of bullets everywhere. One corpse nearby was pointing towards him, hand outstretched, and a blood puddle surrounding, as if asking him to save him. But nobody did.

Johnny ducked his head, back and hurled, his greenish vomit mingling with the black mud. He was alone in the trench, all the soldiers having charged.

But he knew that soon there would be commanders coming, people coming to check how the charge faired. He couldn't even surmise why they sent everybody. He was dead. Just as dead as the corpses in the field. But that was for later. Now he just had to kneel in the dirt at the bottom of the trench and cry.