The Trench

Day 1,998, 06:30 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Henry Hank Moody

And so the story continues yet again. If you'd like to make an appearance in the next part just leave me a comment down below 🙂

Hope you enjoy.

Five bodies lay bloodied and broken around the emplacement. Blood was beginning to ooze across the ground. My men were already stripping the enemy of anything useful. Magazines, grenades and knives were stripped from the fallen enemy, without any thought of remorse or feeling for the men who just minutes before had been breathing and thinking.

I looked back at the victim of my own hand. He was a young boy, probably no older than 19, not really all that much younger than I was at that time. It could easily have been you. The same cliché we all tell ourselves. If you hadn’t killed him he would have killed you. As if that really ever makes it easier.

I tried to withdraw my blade from his chest but my hand slipped in all the blood. I could not grip it and so I left it there, piercing his heart, left to rust as his flesh rotted down into the soil.

I wiped my hands across his uniform, smearing the Irish flag with the deep red of his own blood.

“What’s the next target sarge?”

“Huh?”

“Where too now Sarge?” Once again Axeell pulled me from my own thoughts.

“We follow their trench round and try to link up with the other forces before we push further on to their second line of defence.” If we live that long. “Alright men, grab your gear and ready yourselves. We will move quick and fast. If you see anything shoot it, and then shoot it again.”

I threw one last look at the young man’s face, still frozen in the last scream he would ever made. I felt like I should weep, or morn, or something. A few men had died at the business end of my bullets, but I had never seen them die, or smelt the lunch on their breath. Weep when it is time.

I don’t know whether it was surviving one assault but my fear was taking a back seat this time around. My heart was still hammering in my chest but thankfully my hands were no longer shaking.

We moved along the trench, me and Axeell at the point while the rest of my men scanned the trees on either side, looking for any sign of the Irish.
The sounds of battle had drifted away slightly to our East and so we picked up the pace to link up with our comrades. Though it wasn’t long before we almost ran headlong into an Irish force, no doubt dispatched to check on the machine gun we just neutralised.

Once more it was instinct more than anything else which saved my life. As soon as they turned the corner and entered my vision, just ten metres from us, I dropped to my knee, pulled the rifle tightly into my shoulder and squeezed the trigger.



Two bullets ripped into the man’s chest within a second of each other, his heart exploded in a fountain of blood and he crumpled to the ground. His body tripped two men behind him and I tapped them in their heads as they were on their way to the ground.

Axeell had similarly dispatched the other two men in their squad and we were up and moving towards them at a run less than 5 seconds after they had first rounded the bend. The cracks of our bullets were still reverberating through the forest as we passed the dead bodies.