Dreams and Thoughts - 1917

11 - Don't Forget about Me

Will had been looking for Lieutenant Blake, but couldn't find him anywhere. Not in medical tents, nowhere. He felt hopeless and sick to his stomach with his own failure.

"Now come on boys. He's taken one in the leg. He's lost a lot of blood." An officer orders some soldiers who are taking a wounded man to the medical tent. That voice... it sounded all too familiar. The tone, the pitch. Everything.

"Lieutenant Blake?"

The officer stopped, and turned around to face the soldier. He looks exactly like him, just a bit older. Just like Tom had said.

"Yes."

Will looks at him for a few moments, as if he were to cry. But he couldn't, not then. He needed to stay strong for him. And for Tom.

"Do you need medical assistance?"

"No, Sir. I'm from the Eighth."

"Then what the hell are you doing here?"

"I was sent here to deliver a message-"

"The Eighth?" Joseph asks, walking toward Will. "You must know my brother." He smiles a bit.

"I was sent here with him."

"Tom's here? Where is he?" He asks quickly, ecstatic that his brother had come. However, Will's silence festered in the air and formulated Joseph's realization, his face turning from a smile to a tearful frown.

"It was very quick." Will lied, when in fact it was a very slow and painful death. But he wouldn't let Joseph know that. It would only hurt more. "I'm sorry."

Joseph is wordless, nodding in response and trying to hold back his tears. Will reaches into his tunic pocket, pulling out Tom's last possessions. His rings and his identification tags. They were still bloody from his slow death.

He takes out his hand and offers them to the older Blake, who reached his hand out and takes them. Yet he doesn't close his hand, he just lets them sit there, unable to cope with his younger brother's death at all. It had him frozen in place.

"What's your name?"

"Schofield, Sir."

Joseph seems to nod, looking down at the rings and the tag before looking back up at him. "I'm sorry... what?"

"It's Schofield, Sir. William Schofield." Will repeated, then gave him his nickname. "Will."

"Well, you need some food. Get yourself to the mess tent." Joseph tearfully says, softly appreciating the man but also wanting to be alone at that moment.

Will turns and begins walking away, but then looks at him once more and starts speaking. He remembered the other promise he had made to Tom. To write to their mother; to tell her that he wasn't scared. "If I may, I'd like to write to your mother. Tell her that Tom wasn't alone."

Joseph nodded in response, looking around and sniffling up his tears. "Of course."

The blonde didn't know what else to say. What else was there to say?

The first thing he thought of. "He was... he was a good man. Always telling funny stories." Will spoke so kindly of his friend, remembering the story he was telling earlier about the soldier who had his ear bitten off by a rat. Joseph's attention is caught then, and there's subtle relief that Tom had a true friend with him at his death.

And how could he forget to thank him? "He saved my life." Will finished, looking into Joseph's eyes. It was nothing but the truth, and it was more than once as well. A few months prior Tom had shot a German soldier charging into the English trench, his bayonet just millimeters from slicing into Will's chest.