«letters to the somme»

james » rose.

James stirs in his sleep. He tastes blood on his lips and remembers one of the soldiers landing strokes on his naked skin with a sharp leather belt. The bombs and the shells burst in his head and he goes into a fit, but forces himself to keep quiet. More blood is drawn on his lip.

He feels light-headed. How much blood has he lost? How long has it been? Where is he? One of the trenches near no-man’s land, a hole dug on the east of Germany?

He has no way of knowing, and no way of escape.

Perhaps it would help to write a letter to Rose. He has no pen or paper or stamps, but it would comfort him to think of her, to think of home. His finger traces weakly across the fine dirt on the ground. If he had paper and pen, he would have no strength to use it.

Dear Rose. His jaw wobbles. It has been having these spasms for some time now. Sometimes in his chest, or his back, which is when it painfully arches and he screams in pain. And sometimes he cannot breathe easily.

James winces at these thoughts.

Dear Rose.

I am stuck in a German trench, or an Austrian one, or something else entirely.

You will never know this if I die.

I feel like I’ll die, sometimes. I have spasms in my jaw and in my chest and other places. But I grit my teeth and hope every day, through the whippings and the torture, that someday I’ll return to you.

But I think the end is near, Rosie.

I think I have lock-jaw.

If I do, I hope this message will pass through my head and float up into the sky where the Germans cannot intercept it or whip me for sending it, and fly like an invisible paper plane all the way home.

There’s something wrong with my mind, Rosie. Every time I think of you now, I think of the shells and the bombs, and they explode inside my head. I’m sorry. I thought of you so much when I was fighting.

Please forgive me if I do not return.

Forget me. Get married. Have children.

Forget this hopeless, idiotic war. We’ll meet again on Judgement Day –

Nonetheless James cannot finish his imaginary letter, because his back arches and he feels like someone has grabbed his spine and shook it hard, and it is the most unimaginably excruciating pain. James almost bites through his lip, but he cannot stop his voice from screaming and writhing on the floor, thin tears spurting in his eyes as he cries and yells and prays for home or a merciful death.

But it is not home or death that comes, only the guards with their whips and their belts and their hateful, bloody strokes.