The Great War - A Collection of Short Stories

Over the Top

           He held his rifle as tightly as he could, trying to resist the fear of the unknown getting the better of him. He was so consumed in fear that he hardly noticed the rotten, dead smell of the trenches. Hopelessness and low morale lingered through the air. His commanding officer inhaled, grabbed his whistle, and blew into it with the effort of a hundred oxen, the intense bloodcurdling whistle startling a few of the men nearby. Men started rushing out of the trenches in droves, climbing over the parapets and vaulting over the sandbags. The many that survived the initial departure from their trench unknowingly ran towards their deaths, killing any last sense of false hope the men around them might've had.

           He awkwardly climbed over the top, and the second he reached over the sandbags and into the open, the fear drained out of him like a plug and all he could think of was the task at hand. A rush of adrenaline shot through his body. He charged through the muddy, destroyed landscape! Rapid fire erupted throughout the dead fields, the shells of German artillery boomed around him, men were dying left and right! As he trudged through the mud as quickly as he could, engraved wooden gravestones started sprouting from the ground around him. Some decorated in poppy flowers and knife carvings in the wood, others topped off with the helmets of the fallen soldiers. He slowed down for a moment, to look around, try to grasp what he was seeing. Reality hit him once again and he looked around, confused, nervous, scared, and disgusted, all at the same time! His head was spinning and so many things were happening so fast he just couldn't stay calm!

          He came to a complete halt. The world around him faded slowly to a murky blackness, a mist began to linger through the air. The sounds of the environment around him, screaming, footsteps, gunfire, and the maddening booming of the German shells faded away. He heard only a light, incomprehensible whispering surrounding his ears, like a ghost, calling to him, trying to communicate some sort of message to him. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees, weak, defeated. At that moment, he'd accepted death. Everything in his life he'd worked for, his wife, his only child, his home in the Welsh countryside, gone, to the Great War. Minutes later, he was surrounded in gravestones. He let out a defeated cry of help and fell to his side, clutching his stomach. The rain poured so hard the pitter patter drowned out his thoughts. He lay there, surrounded in gravestones, ready to become one himself. The world around him faded to a cold, sharp blackness. He could feel Death's presence, like a tingling cold feeling absorbing the warmth and any shred of humanity inside him.

          He woke with a start, his plain white shirt soaked with sweat, and his boxer briefs damp with another liquid. He blinked rapidly and looked around. He realized that he was gone from his own hell, in his dimly lit bedroom, safe and sound. It was 1924 once again, he was no longer in the Somme anymore. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, pressed his hands together, and prayed to God that no man would ever have to see what he and his closest comrades saw in the Great War.