Over the Trenches

Chapter 3

When I wake up, I am lying on the ground. It's night time. I don't see any movement. Surely the medics should have come already. I look around me. I see men lying dead and wounded all around me. Apparently the medics haven't come yet. Shame.

I notice my hand is in a different position from earlier, when I had it pressed against the bullet wound. It's lying by my side. Remembering the injury I lift up my now-bloodstained jacket to see someone has attended my wound. Its wrapped in a grey fabric that's tied messily around my waist.

It clearly wasn't done by a medic, or any trained professional. They would have bandaged me up and taken me out of here to the hospital for good measure. Give it a bit of luck I might have got home on leave. Now wouldn't that be nice!

But no. Whoever did this was clearly an amateur, but hey, who would I be to judge. They saved my life.

Looking around, I try to take in my surroundings. The darkness masks a few of my clumsier movements as I try to position myself so that I can see the field clearly. I'm closer to my trench than I thought I would be. I notice a jacket lying on top of me, but it isn't a British one, or even one from any of the countless battalions of allied troops fighting on my side of the war. It's a German one.

I decide to ignore it for now and I shuffle about in some attempt to see if there's any chance of crawling back into the trench. Luckily, I don't see anyone moving around and I thank the god I don't believe in for it not being a patrol night.

I stick my head out down low and begin the slow crawl back up to my trench. Dragging my hips across the ground is the most painful thing I've ever experienced. I come across an allied soldier lying dead, motionless on the ground. He has a watch chain that's fallen out of his pocket with a picture of a young woman on the inside and an inscription of 'Mon Amour' written on the cover. I grab the watch in hopes to be able to return it to whoever the woman is. Not that it's likely that I would ever manage but it's still a nice thought.

After what seems like hours I made it to the wire on our side of no-mans-land. All that's left for me to do is make it through the wire and convince the guy on sentry duty not to shoot me before he gets a chance to see my uniform. The wire, of course is the most difficult part. It's built to stop people entering the trench with ease and I can firmly say that regardless of all the useless and borderline-suicidal tactics the British have come up with, the bugger that came up with this one did a pretty good job of it.

The watch tells me that it's almost 4am. Worriedly I try to speed-up the pace as I know it will be much harder to not get caught up in shell fire when the sun comes up. The Germans seem to like to wake you up with their very own personalised alarm clock. If I'm caught out in the morning fire then there's a good chance I won't make it back for breakfast and the thought that I could be trapped out here alone terrifies me.

I got onto one of the last layers of the wire when I noticed a familiar looking helmet sitting on the ledge right next to the sentry post. Y'see the owner of the helmet decided it was much too boring in plain grey and sent a letter back home to send for some charcoal chalk crayons. They spent countless nights in the bunk above mine drawing on the helmet, little faces, stars and anything else that popped into his overly positive head . The very head that was, to both my delight and dismay bobbing just above the sandbags.

"Hey! Greg!" I whisper just loud enough for him to hear, "Keep your head up like that and you're going to get shot!"

He whipped his head round and I could see his face breaking into a grin. "You absolute idiot! I thought you were dead! I saw you get shot and..."

"Oh yes! ...Right, that. I'll explain in a minute but first you need to help me get into this trench without getting shot" I interrupt him

He helps drag me into the trench, or I suppose, what used to be the trench. There's hardly anyone here and the people that are here are only half alive, sitting against the muddy walls and covered in everything from cuts to bullet wounds bleeding out into the stream that's freely flowing down the middle of the trench due to the fact it seems that the duckboard has been obliterated in the return shell fire.

Needless to say, it's a mess

"The rest of the lads are down in the dugout, there's not much left of us but we'll keep going. Sargent's still here though, I don't know how long that'll last. He's got a bullet right in his shoulder and it's bleeding out quickly" Greg whispers out to me and we make our way through the mud to the remains of the dugout door.

He was right about there not being very many of us left. There couldn't have been more than 15 and they were all huddled round in groups wrapping wounds with any fabric they could get their hands on. Which included, to my dismay, parts of the sandbag I had been sleeping on for the most of my time here.

Greg and I sit down onto my bed as a younger guy, much to young to be out here might I add, goes to take his place at the firestep.

He looks over at me and whispers "So what happened out there? I saw you get shot! I know I did!"

"Yeah, you're right, I got shot. Right in the hip too. And then I blacked out. That's all I remember before this morning when I crawled back to the trench and saw you!" I look him in the eyes, it's clear he doesn't believe me. I mean, to be honest, I wouldn't believe me either. If you're shot in the hip and you don't find a way to stop the bleeding, you die. That's it. There's no crawling back into the trench from that.

"So no offence mate but, a shot like that. You're supposed to be dead." Then after a pause, "Can I see it?" He asks in a serious tone of his that I'm not used to.

My heart stops. What if he recognises the German uniform? Will he think I'm in league with one of them? Oh god, what if he turns me in for treason? Plus, I promised him that I would tell him what happened the night we were out on patrol. What will he think about all of this? I mean I can't just say no. Then he'll know something is going on. So slowly I lift up my shirt to show to the clumsily wrapped wound.

"Are you sure you didn't wrap it?" He said as he looked over at me lowering his voice further.

"Haven't touched it, I swear! I was out in the field when some guy shot me, I collapsed into the ground and the next thing I knew I was lying in a shell hole a few feet away with this bandaged all over my chest" I say a bit too loudly.

He leans in closer and says "Look mate, I believe you, but you know what this looks like though? You were hit by a practically fatal shot didn't make it back to the trench. Then somehow miraculously woke up again and crawled back to the trench with an, albeit messy, fully bandaged wound made from German uniform. That's a good enough reason to send you in to the firing squad!"

"Just because it was made from German uniform doesn't mean some German did it, maybe someone saw me on the ground and ripped it off a dead one. They were all over the place and they'd hardly put up a fight!" I hissed back at him under my breath defensively. I didn't want to be considered a traitor. After I'd just proved to myself and anyone else watching that I was, in fact not a coward. I shot at least seven of those Germans so whatever happened that night on sentry must have been some sort of fluke.

"Alright alright! I believe you!" He saw some heads begin to turn to look over at our argument "I just don't know how many of them lot will" he said, just loud enough to hear.

"I guess that's a problem I'll have to deal with later, it seems they're short of men at the moment anyways, wouldn't do much good sending one off to the firing squad now would it?" I joked back at him, hoping to change the subject"

It worked. "Well, at any rate, it's a Christmas miracle! Did you hear?...well i guess you didn't, Molly sent me a pair of gloves and made you a pair too! She's anxious to hear how you managed in the attack, can't wait to tell her that we both made it out alright, She'll be so proud!"

"Speaking of Christmas, how many days is it now? It can't be too long till old St. Nick comes round again, although I reckon with our reputation out here he'd rather stay away" I realise that this Christmas will be the first that I spend away from home and my family. Somehow that hits harder than the fact there's a badly dressed bullet wound in my chest.

His face lights up again, "It's Christmas Eve tonight! Of course! I wonder if the Sargent will let us do anything, even just a trip out to a local town. It would do us some good to get a nice hot meal after all this mess!" He starts rambling on about christmases with Molly from years and years ago and how they met at the annual family Christmas gala and other things I really don't care about at the moment.

Before I could lie back against my now-pillow-less bed, the Sargent stumbles over to us half-heartedly smiling

"Glad to see you made it back" he starts, "and I'm sorry to be asking the two of you this but