The Trenches Of Hell - World War One

The Battle

It was October. But from the trench nobody could tell as all the trees were burned to the ground. We had been here for a full month with no relief. Morale was low and the soldiers were starving. Then it came. Through the night sky we could spot a flare. "Was that ours?" I hear another soldier shout from somewhere down the trench in which we are all standing, rifles aimed. "No, that's French. Get ready men!" Came another man.

Then we heard it. Mortars began firing in the distance as we saw a horde of men rise from the trench across no man's land. Here they come. Some of the younger soldiers began firing inaccurately at the mass sprinting it's way toward us. Then we heard the whistle of the Mortars as they came down. "Get your damn heads down!" The earth around the trench exploded, showering us in dirt and blood from the dead laying around us. But it stopped as soon as it began and we were back up. "Shit!" cried a younger soldier. "They are right on us!". The French used the Mortars to keep us down as they ran on us and now they were close. The line crackled with gunfire from rifles and machineguns. I fired my rifle as fast as I could into the mass of men. Battle cries turned to screams of terror and pain as they were brutally shot and killed point blank. Not a single man made it into our trench but as I looked around I noticed that we were not the only ones firing.

While most of us were unharmed there were a few wounded and killed. "Let the medics get them!" Called our commander "Get out of the trench and charge those bastards!" Orders are law in the trench. We proceeded to crawl from our safe ditch in the muddle blood soaked ground and began running through the field covered in bleeding, dying French. Some of them still tried to fire but we're quickly silenced by our bayonets. This was slaughter. But they did the same to us.

After killing the last who resisted we kept running. I knew better than to be the front. So I stayed in the middle of the charge. Then it came. The air above cracked with bullets flying overhead as the trench in front of us flashed like the gates of heaven through the now pitch black night with bright gunfire. While some of the men made it into the trench, the rest of us either took cover or died. I leaped into a mortar crater. There were French and German screams of pain and agony with gunshots flying everywhere. As the gunfire died down the screams and moans continued.

After the last of the shots I made my way out of the crater using the darkness as my friend and made my way in the direction I thought my trench was in. As I heard gunshots behind me I realized which side was which as one of us must have crawled into the wrong trench. I slowly and cautiously crawled through the piles of blood and bodies until I eventually made it back. I joined the rest of the reserves on the line and everything went back to normal. Nothing has been gained. All that was lost was the lives of young men. But that didn't matter. This was war.