by Amanda Dykes
Boats and trains and marching till my feet bled, then till I no longer knew whether I had feet, all feeling lost. Jostling rides in trucks that broke down yet transported me and a thousand other guys across the world, where we trained more and waited. Finally, we were called up to the front.
The front. It had a fabled draw about it, lighting up fellas’ faces as if they were about to see the place they would meet their own courage.
The first night on the front, I dreamed of Gulliver, the horse back at Maplehurst. When Celia and I were younger—and perhaps even more recently than that, though I’ll not be the one to say it—we would lay on our bellies beneath the old grandstand at Maplehurst and pull out a ruler we’d salvaged from the fire barrel in back of the barn. It only went up to 11.38 inches, because Poseidon had bit off the end when a reporter tried to measure his teeth. But it was perfect for us, a treasure to measure the explosions of sand made when Gulliver landed his hooves on the track.
It’s amazing what you see when you lower yourself down and just wait. Every fall of the hoof for that horse was earthen fireworks. One thousand pounds of thoroughbred strength searing air and pummeling ground, dust flying upward. I used to close my eyes around that image—to see each particle, the way the dark soil soared into sunlight in her wake. If you didn’t close your eyes, isolate that moment, it’d be lost in a dirty cloud.
And now, here I was. Lowered into the earth, peering over the edge of a trench. And do you know what I saw? Thousands of pounds searing the air, pummeling earth. Launching earth into air, dirt swallowing sun. As if an army of invisible horses—giants—were galloping through no-man’s-land, the middle stretch between enemy trenches. Only these horses were not Gulliver. They were not horses at all, unless they were the sort that would carry the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They were weapons—metal falling, shells colliding. And the spray of earth from their unseen hooves would have crushed Poseidon’s ruler to bits. There was no measuring the uprising debris, not here. Eleven inches or eleven miles, it mattered not. It swallowed everything around it into a colorless, lifeless landscape.
A kid called Chester trembled with anticipation beside me. His full name was Chester Hasenpfeffer—surname meaning some sort of rabbit stew. But it was the name that was a mouthful for us, and in a language none of us were too keen to be caught speaking in the trenches just now, so we all called him Chester, though he was earning his rabbit-y name now. Bopping up and down to see over the top and vibrating energy from every part of him, right down to the pinky finger that he kept tapping on top of his rifle.
“Wonder when it’ll be us,” he said. I shrugged the first three times he asked. The fourth, I answered.
“They say there’s more wire out there than they’ve seen anywhere in the war,” I said at last. “We won’t get far till the first wave goes in and cuts it. And they won’t get far till the shells and planes drive back whoever they can before that.”
I said “drive back,” but we both knew it meant “drive down,” more truthfully. We just didn’t want to think about that. Nor the fact that the Germans were doing the same to us.
Night fell, and with it, the rain and thunder. The shelling was so bad by then that I couldn’t even hear Chester’s chatter, though he was two inches from my ear and giving it all he had. I shook my head, trying to tell him talk was useless—but he kept on. I kind of appreciated it. The kid was undaunted.
For a moment, the shells were distant enough that I could hear him, and he told me of his parents, his two sisters and kid brother. “See?” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a picture that I couldn’t make heads or tails of in the dark. “Hold on,” he said, and pulled out a matchbox, removing a stick and making to strike. My hand clamped down on his, hard.
“Owww!” He yanked his hand back and shook it out, shooting daggers of a glare at me. “What’d you do that for? If you don’t want to see the picture, just say so! You don’t have to take my arm off.”
“You light that match, it’s not me who’ll take your arm off.” I jerked my head up and back, gesturing toward the German line.
Chester’s face morphed from anger to horror. “Oh,” he said. “Right.” He stuffed the matchbox away but kept the picture out. I felt bad for the kid. A few yards down, I spotted a small light, cold and familiar. Some of the men had a jar of glowworms. It was a trench trick—enough minuscule light that it would let them see a map or a sweetheart’s picture. Enough light to give them hope for the next moment but not enough to get them killed.
I closed the gap between us and asked if I could borrow it, bringing the little creatures back with me. Chester was duly impressed with the soon-to-be-beetles, the someday-lightning-bugs like the ones Celia and I used to capture back at Maplehurst.
He showed me his picture, worn almost away. The kid talked a lot of courage—and I could tell he had it, too—but the soft wear of this portrait told the tale of a boy who missed his family something fierce.
He returned the jar to the other men and walked back, shaking his head like an old war hero. “Oh, the tales we’ll have to tell someday, eh?” he said, elbowing me. “Once we go up and over?”
I glanced at him sideways. “Maybe.” Not the sort of tales he’d be eager to tell once he lived them. But I didn’t want to dampen his spirits.
“The ladies will think it’s somethin’ else, eh?” he said, grinning. “But—and I hate to tell you this—you might need to lighten up your countenance if you want them to take note.”
I had to hold in a snort. He looked hardly old enough to be out on his own, and he was apparently the expert.
“Yeah,” he said, assessing me very seriously. “You’d have to travel the world over to find a girl for you, I think.”
Good gravy, the kid was wearying. I opened my mouth to silence him—but then came the whistles, our signal to prepare.
“This is it,” Chester said. “I’ve waited fifteen years for this. We’ll be heroes today, you and me.”
All fell silent as we awaited our command. But I couldn’t look away from him. “Fifteen years.” I’d heard wrong.
Chester nodded, his helmet wiggling back and forth on his head. “My whole life.”
“Your whole life?” I hissed the words. He was fifteen? Fifteen. He’d always seemed young, but hearing this, with the deafening blows as a backdrop, sank heavy dread into my stomach.
I was twenty-three. Eight years older than him, and still I felt small in the face of this. But I was platoon sergeant, thanks to Captain Truett and reasons I couldn’t comprehend—who was I but the boy in a barn, grown up? Still, I exceeded Chester in both years and rank. So I gave the private a dry and reprimanding look. He was three years younger than Celia. If we’d had a kid brother . . . I wanted to clock him on the head and deliver him to safety, all at once.
“What?” he whispered. “I told them my age when I signed up. They told me to step outside and have two or three birthdays and come back. So I did.”
“And how long did those ‘birthdays’ take?” I could hear the anger in my voice.
“About seven minutes.”
“Each?”
“Total.” Chester raised his head over the top again.
“On my command, private!” the patrolling captain hollered, and Chester ducked back down to salute.
“Yes, sir!”
“Fix bayonets!”
A mechanical chorus echoed obedience.
Chester resumed his stance of preparedness like the rest of us while my mind scrambled to reconcile the information. Fifteen. What had I been doing at fifteen, but mucking stalls, failing at algebra, running a racetrack in the dead of night, and clawing for hope in the dark? And here was this kid, staring down Hades and grinning.
The whistle blew.
We were over the top, the outcry of all of us rallying each other, propelling our feet forward when our brains would have us stay.
I tried to imagine I was back at Greenfield Springs. I was born for this. The smell
of the hay, the slick of mud, the click of starting gates harnessing oceans of strength.
But the second we were up, I saw it too clear: The smell here was not of hay, but of expired death. The slick of mud was not that of a racetrack, but that of an in-between land more cratered than the moon, where mud could suck you in and eat you whole. And the click was not of starting gates, but weapons. Weapons, and weapons, and weapons—again and again and again. Firing straight into an ocean of men.
Back home, the gate flew open to the crack of the pistol and life beat into the ground. Here, the floodgates flew open to the sound of the whistle and the ground beat the life out of us.
Moments ceased to exist out there. I could no more account for the timeline than fly us all to the actual moon. But I can say it was a mess of cold, wet, mud, and blood. Barbed wire. Famished craters made of our own artillery, gulping us down. Billowing curtains of grey smoke and dust arising out of nowhere. Wires lashing us as we passed, our own cat-of-nine-tails slicing flesh, as if to urge us on at the hand of a ruthless master.
So we went. Dodging gunfire, shellfire, machine gun nests. Nests. I remember thinking how odd, how ridiculous, to find nests out here where there were no birds. But these were not that sort of nest. Not even close.
The battle cry scattered, becoming less strong and being peppered with other cries—pained ones. I did not want to think what the shrinking chorus of voices meant. There was no time for thinking. Only acting. Chester harnessed all his youthful zeal into a dogged focus I had not seen the likes of nor thought him capable of. He was a dart, dodging and ducking, bending and leaping, falling to the ground at just the right moments. As if he, too, was made for this.
And yet in my own dodging and ducking and sliding, all I could see was the grin of a kid, the ruddy cheeks of someone who did not know the horror of war.
But I saw it find him. And it was not gentle in its approach. I saw him take in the sights and sounds, how it slowed him. Grew his eyes wide, horrified. Made him trip. Made him careless.
I looked at Chester over my shoulder, making sure he was still with us, and saw in the drawn desperation of his face a symbol of every one of the soldiers out here.
That was when it hit us.
One shell impacted to the right. Another to the left. One in front, boxing us in—and then one of our star shells, lighting the sky like lightning amidst all this thunder—and I heard the fourth one coming.
“Chester!” I yelled his name with a force that shook, and still could not hear my own voice.
He stood, shocked. Frozen. Unmoving, as the coming shell seemed to slow in my vision. I could see it, and for all that failed algebra, I knew exactly where it was headed.
I lunged. Grabbed him, tossed him into the crater to our left, the one that had been meant for our demise, and landed hard on top of him.
That shell . . . we did not see it land, our faces buried as they were.
But we felt it. To our bones and beyond, until I was sure we had no bones any longer. Only dust.
I do not know how long we laid there. I did not know if Chester lived. I, surely, was dead.
But a muffled sound broke through somewhere in our would-be grave, a sound unfurling into the pound, pound, pound of my own heartbeat.
I lifted my head.
Chester, beneath me, lifted his, and wriggled out, rabbit-like again. He said something. Two syllables, each silent.
“What?” My ears rang.
“Let’s go!” I saw the words, more than heard them.
He clambered to get out of the crater. Jumped at the wall of it, jumped again. Looking more cricket than man. Or boy. I rolled myself up and slogged through the cloud to get to him, everything trembling before me. Whether from the world shaking or myself—I did not know.
I crouched and wove my fingers together, creating a sling under his foot. He looked down at me over his shoulder, eyes wide with excitement, and nodded. I gave a silent count with small nods—one, two, three—and launched him.
He was out. And off. Stupid kid forgot all about me. At least I hoped that was the reason his face didn’t reappear. I felt a burn coiling up inside. The Flame—my old friend and foe. But it would do me no good here. I tamped it down and focused.
Knocking my soggy boots into the muddy sides of the hill, I tried to make footholds but found only mudslides. Backing up, I gave it a running start, ignoring a burn in my left calf. I failed, slicking to the ground. And failed again on the next try, with more running start, more burn. On the third try I nearly mounted the newly-born mud cliff—and just as I felt gravity about to take me down again, a hand appeared and grabbed mine, pulling me up.
I emerged to a sight I can never unsee: dawn rising over Armageddon. Shells piercing so deep they kicked up dust where there should be only mud, which also flew with impossible force. Tanks and horses painted a picture of two irreconcilable worlds, and among men in every state from living to dead—one muddy, fearsome face stared back at me.
Captain Jasper Truett. He’d found me at Plattsburg, set me on my feet there. Gave me a place to stand and belong. I hadn’t seen him since the training camp, a world and a lifetime away. . . . And now here he was. Somewhere behind the grime, ice-blue eyes pierced the bleak landscape and landed on me.
He was talking. What had he said?
I stared, dumbly. He lifted his bayonet and picked up my hand from my side. “You’ll be alright,” he said. Muffled, the words made no sense. Until I saw my hand, the unnatural bent of two of the fingers and how they hung like broken things while the rest of that hand trembled. And as I watched, as the sensation of the uncontrolled shaking crept its way up my wrist, my arm . . . my body seemed to reawaken.
“Let’s go,” Captain Jasper Truett said.
And we did. We went, and we went, and we went, and I lost him pretty quick along the way in the madness between taking that first German line and liberating the village behind it, where the people would not come out. They did not even know America had come to France; they had no idea who we were, other than “fou.” Crazy. Insane. And well did we fit that description.
But perhaps our barbaric charge and apparent fearlessness served us. For as I spotted one German emerge from a dugout, I mechanically marched to him. He registered the sight of me and disappeared back into hiding. I shot painfully, aimlessly into the dark with my useless fingers, expending my last bullets and not even caring. I had not the energy nor strength to care that I was unarmed. And perhaps to my shame, I prayed that the bullets did not hit their mark. It was my duty—but I did not want to do it. What had I against this man, who so easily could have been me, and I, him, but for the countries we were born into?
Perhaps God was in that godless place after all—for the man emerged, unscathed. My prayer, answered.
And then another emerged. Hands up, like his comrade, at the sight of my pointed, empty rifle.
Another.
And another.
And another—until a dozen Jerries lined up before me, hands raised, me the lone firing squad who could not fire.
“Please,” one said, his words shaped by his accent. “Shoot don’t. Shoot don’t.”
“Don’t shoot,” I mumbled, interpreting for myself.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
The man’s eyes flew open wide, panicked at my misinterpreting his confirmation. He raised his hands higher, wincing. “No!”
“No?”
“No shoot!”
These men were as done in as I was. Jabbing my gun deep into my shoulder to show I meant business, they fell into line quick as ants. I ignored the numb throbbing in my hand and blessed the dusty fog that hid my crippled abilities from them. Could I have shot them, even if I’d wanted to? Even if I had ammunition? I did not know.
They allowed me to march them back to our lines in a bedraggled zig-zag skirting our fallen comrades, theirs and mine, and came back to a reception of clicking rifles emerging over the top of the trench, pointed at them . .
. followed by a command.
“Hold your fire!” a voice said from below.
I came to the front of the line, and the men erupted in cheers as the Germans were ushered into captivity with the rest of the sea of them we’d captured that day.
“Three cheers for Petticrew!” a boisterous voice proclaimed. It was Chester, who remembered me well enough now.
“No thanks to you,” I mumbled as I passed him.
“What’s that?” He grinned, exultant at the reality of simple survival.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
“You should be more careful,” he said, pointing at my misshapen hand. I nodded. And hated the kid’s naivety so much that I loved him for it, too.
“Look.” He held up something dimly metallic. “You brought in a string of soldiers, and I brought something in, too.”
I narrowed my eyes and stopped long enough to lean in to view the brass cylinder. “Whatcha got?”
“Shell casing. Pulled it out of the hole we fell in.”
It was too absurd. I dropped my chin to my chest and laughed.
“What?” Chester brushed dried mud off of his prize in rhythmic repetition.
“You pulled that out of the hole.”
He nodded. “Pretty great, right? Sort of like a trophy from my first battle.”
“You had the presence of mind to pull out a spent shell casing but not your platoon sergeant?”
His hands froze. He lifted his eyes to mine and the mortification spread over his whole being as realization set in. He started to stammer, but I held up a hand to stop him. He looked so very young, so wide-eyed, there with his treasure in his hands. Better he pull something out of the war than the war pull something out of him. It was a wonder he still held spunk, some sense of innocence, after what we’d seen today.
“Listen, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s chaos out there.”
He looked ready to cry, chin trembling, and he clamped down, drawing his stature up to fight it even as he hung his head. There was no mistaking the cloak that draped him, ready to snuff the life out of him: shame. It was a powerful thing. And one thing he did not need to carry.