i fell in love in 1914 ~ l.s

🌨️ 4 🌨️

~ Louis ~

"Shut the fuck up." Müller sneers at me. "Nobody gives a shit about your birthday"

I may or may not have been excitedly telling everyone about my birthday. It's just that I'm turning 23 tomorrow but nobody cares. Everyone is upset that we won't be home for Christmas. Instead, we will be in France, celebrating our Christmas in trenches.

"Oh, I'm sorry for being happy" I sass. They are just so negative all the time.

"I'm just done with dealing with you Tomlinson, we're all tired and you keep screaming your gonna stay up whole night so you don't miss a second of your birthday." Müller complains. Müller is always bossing everyone around, which is his job, but it annoys me.

As soon as I open my mouth, Müller sneers at me: "don't talk back to me. Sit down and get some rest, don't waste your energy, we don't know what will happen tomorrow."

I roll my eyes but sit down on the hard ground. We've all heard the rumors, but we're a little skeptical about them. People have been saying that we will stop fighting tomorrow, like we put our guns down and celebrate Christmas together.

I think it's a great idea, don't get me wrong, but it sounds like a fairytale.

Nothing like that has ever happened. How do we know that the British army will participate. They call it the Christmas truce, which sounds official and reliable. But here, in the cold trench, it feels like a fever dream.

Even if it would work, which seems unlikely, what if I actually like the soldiers? What if we would have fun? I have no choice but to kill them, or get killed by them the next day anyways. It was hard enough being British and having to fight in the German army. I've lived in Germany for almost 6 years now, but I'm still British at heart.

It's getting late but I'm not tired at all, like Müller said, I don't want to miss a second of  my birthday.

My breath creates clouds in the cold air. Then I feel cold drops on my face; I open my eyes and see tiny snowflakes falling down from the sky. A smile creeps up my face, I always loved the snow on my birthday.

At this point almost everyone is sleeping but I'm still wide awake, writing in my little notebook about my last day being 22.

"What time is it?" I ask Paul again. I've been asking him this non stop since I broke my pocket watch a few weeks ago.

Paul looks on his muddy pocket watch and says: "only 4 minutes until you're 23, kid." Sometimes I feel like Paul is the only one here that actually likes me. He's 37 which makes him the oldest of our group.

I'm the youngest here, there is a 17 year old a few miles left which isn't right because the age limits are 18-43 (although I heard rumors that the age limit might change to 18-60). But the law doesn't prevent stuff like that in times of war I guess.

"Only 1 minute now." Paul says, interrupting my thoughts. I stand up, shaking the snow off me. I hurry over to Paul to grab his pocket watch and I stare at the hand of the clock hoping it would move a little faster.

"It's my birthday!" I exclaim as soon as the hand hits the twelve. Most men in the trench wake up and Müller grunts telling me to keep quiet.

I'm just enthusiastically dancing and skipping through the trench. I hear Paul laughing and Müller says something about him not going to feel bad if my head will get shot. I'm not listening.

I climb up the ladder and look around me. My head sticks out the trench so chances are that a bullet is gonna be in my head soon. Then ground is covered in a layer of snow which makes the battlefield less scary.

"A German!" I hear someone from the other side of the field yell. I get pulled down roughly before I can even move. As soon as I'm down I hear gunshots.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!" The man that pulled me down yells at me. "I don't even know why you pulled him down, he deserved to be shot." Müller grunts. I know they don't mean it though. We all have each other's backs even if we don't like each other.

I lay on the ground taking deep breaths, I feel my blood rushing through me. I look up to Paul to see him with a relieved expression. I send him a smile back and get up to continue skipping and dancing but with my back bent so I won't get shot. "It's my birthday, it's my birthday, it's my birthday..." I whisper over and over.

❆

They decided it's my turn to keep an eye on the British. I already did that two nights ago but since Karl thought I was annoying he decided to switch places so he could sleep. It's a dark early morning, and it's still snowing.

Since snow absorbs sound, it's really quiet.

Paul told me once that there every snowflake is unique. It's an amazing thing to think that snowflakes are in ways like humans.

I just think it's bullshit. I mean, the world is super old and you want to tell me that never, never ever ever there has been 2 snowflakes that have been the same? I don't buy it.

(A/n: In 1988, a scientist found two identical snow crystals. They came from a storm in Wisconsin.)

I think that the sun will be up in two hours or so. I hope so at least, I like the dark but it's kinda scary.

Then I hear people sing (?) vaguely.

It becomes louder and louder and it doesn't take long until I recognize the song they sing.

I don't know who started singing but the sound of "silent night" is not only next to me, but also on the other side of the field.

I hear the German version louder cause it's closer to me but I start joining in with the English version of the song, since I don't know the lyrics in German. People around me wake up but they all stay silent. It's a magical moment.

Before I know it everyone is singing. It's almost unreal in some ways. I pinch myself and conclude that I'm not sleeping.

So we all sing Christmas songs until the sun comes up.