Holme Again

21

This was it, my first time over the top. We waited, miserably, all expecting to die. That's what people did. They expected to die, then if they got back alive, they'd pray to be as lucky the next time.

The whistle blew and we scrambled over the barbed wire and started charging. I n a hundred years, they hadn't changed tactics. I resented them for being so stupid.

Gunshots and explosions filled the air around me. Earth flew up in all directions. Soon, I realised it was a massacre. A bullet missed my head by a hair's breadth, and I dived to the ground, trying to look as though I'd been hit, hoping against hope that I wouldn't be shot at again.

The massacre went on around me for about another fifteen minutes. A dead girl fell on top of me, and I saw her lifeless eyes staring wide.

After the battle subsided, I waited longer, holding my breath, then slowly, agonisingly slowly, began to slide towards my own lines. Eventually I arrived, and the soldiers stationed there cried out in surprise, and then celebration, at seeing me alive. The major came and shook my hand heartily.

"We thought you were all dead, Holmes. At least we have one survivor. And good luck it happens to be out best rifleman."

At that moment, my legs have our at the knees, and I sunk down against the slimy mid wall of the trench.

It happened again. Almost the same thing. Except this time, the whole remaining company went over, and only three of us returned alive. Myself, the corporal, and a woman named Emelia Perkins. I had been using on the cold, slushy ground, pretending to be dead, when I saw Amelia twitching some metres away. The major was very impressed that I had, at severe risk to my own life, crawled over to her and helped her back to our lines, as she had been shot in the knee.

We sat in the trench, panting, all three of us, for a while.

"I'd better administer some first aid to Private Perkins," I muttered, standing up.

I went into the officers' shelter and removed the kit from the wall. Upon returning, Perkins' breathing had become ragged and shallow, and I realised just how much blood she must have lost. I tied a bandage tightly around the wound, then have her some water to sip.