This is War [ONC 2021] // Honourable Mention

Chapter Fourteen - Kurt

When the ground started to explode around him, Kurt knew there was no going back. He ran down the trench with his head low, avoiding bursts of shell fire and ducking against the mud walls when dirt and small rocks started to rain down on him. Men shouted orders throughout the trench but the explosions and gunfire made them almost impossible to hear.

Kurt reached the others seconds before a shell exploded just above the lip of the trench, sending more dirt and debris raining down into the trenches. Smoke filled the trench, choking Kurt but he did his best to ignore it and ran up to Wilhelm and Johannes, who both had their rifles poised over the top of the trench and were firing out into the smoke, neither of them knowing if they were hitting anything or their bullets were lost.

"What took you so long?" Wilhelm yelled over the shell bursts and gunfire.

"I was trying to not get myself blown up, or shot!" He handed over a satchel. "Here, extra ammunition."

"We're going to need it, I can't see a thing!"

"If you can see their shadow, they're too close anyway!" Johannes exclaimed.

Johannes squeezed the trigger on his rifle, but none of them could determine if it hit anything or just fell to the ground. Dirt continued to be thrown up around them, occasionally showing them with small pieces of stones or clumps of mud. Behind them, men rushed past carrying extra ammunition to the machine gunners a little further down the line. Once or twice, a medic ran past with a wad of bandages in his hand and blood coating his fingertips.

Another explosion went off just in front of them and Kurt pressed his face into the mud of the trench wall until the dirt settled. He swung his rifle up from his shoulder and aimed it through a small gap in the middle of the sandbags that had been stacked on the wall of the trench for added height. Through the smoke, he could see nothing but the scattering of debris when it landed and the slight outline of the barbed wire that had become the divider between the two trenches.

He looked through the gap in the sandbags, his finger lingering over the trigger. Beside him, Johannes and Wilhelm fired into the vast, empty nothingness, occasionally listening out for a scream or a yell to indicate they had hit someone but none of them could hear much over the gunfire and explosions. They could barely hear the men moving around behind them let alone those making their way across the fields in front of them.

"When is this smoke going to lift?" Wilhelm asked, firing his gun. "If we can't see them, I doubt they can see us."

"I'd rather move under smoke then out in the open where everyone can see me," Kurt said.

"At least if they were out in the open we'd know what we were firing at!"

"Come on, men! The Tommy's are right across that ridge and you're standing around having a conversation! Get on with it!" the Hauptmann yelled. His voice was one of the only ones that could break through the mortar shells and gunfire.

Kurt turned back towards the space between the two trenches and squeezed the trigger of his rifle, listening out for anything that might indicate he had hit someone. At training, they always knew whether or not they had hit their target, but they had been wooden, knowing whether or not he hit a person felt differently and he didn't like it. Still, with the Hauptmann still lurking behind them, he continued to fire his gun out into the open and tried not to think about who he might have hit.

The mortar shells exploding around them stopped. Kurt could hear a slight ringing in his ears from all the explosions but the sound of gunfire still echoed through the trench. With the mortar shells having stopped, the smoke surrounding them started to shift, moving away with the wind and allowing a little more visibility. The men stared out and played with the triggers on their guns, not firing them but not wanting to relax either.

Wilhelm moved suddenly, as though alerted to a presence nearby, but before he could fire his weapon, a soldier in their own Regiment stumbled over the lip of the trench and fell face-first onto the mud below. Johannes scrambled off the wall of the trench, dropping his gun beside him and kneeling down next to the man. Blood covered the outside of his uniform and he had somehow managed to lose his helmet.

For a split second, Kurt looked away from the ridge of the trench and down at the man, his breath catching when he saw the man's uniform slick with blood. The man struggled to breathe as Johannes used what little medic training they had been given to work on him. Wilhelm tapped Kurt on the shoulder and pointed back to the top of the trench.

"Watch the line, we'll get him down to the medics," he said.

Kurt nodded and turned his attention back to his rifle which he kept pointed through the gap in the sandbags. He stared out into the vast nothingness that separated the two trenches and kept them at a comfortable distance from the enemy. The gunfire continued to go off around him, but it wasn't as aggressive as it had been just moments before. In front of him, he watched the smoke drift away on the wind.

Silence settled around him, the sound of gunfire falling silent as everyone watched the line in anticipation of what would happen when the smoke had cleared. Kurt fidgeted and wrapped his finger around the trigger, his eyes snapping in different directions at the slightest detection of movement, even if it had been behind him. His heart hammered away in his chest.

Something moved in front of him and Kurt squinted his eyes to get a better look at the shadow as it emerged out of the smoke just in front of him. He watched the shadow, waited to see if it was friendly or not.

The shadow moved out of the smoke and into the open, a smile on the man's face and his rifle held tightly in his hand. Kurt looked down at the British uniform the man was wearing and then back to his face. His smile dropped.

Before the enemy could pull the trigger, Kurt got there first and he watched the life drain out of the man before he slumped to the ground.

~~~

First Published - February 23rd, 2021