Symphony of War
The ground shook. The skies whistled. The water splashed. Or was it water? Heinrich touched his face with a shaking hand and looked down at it. No. It was never just water. He wiped the hand to his uniform’s trousers. There it left a dark stain. He reached up again still feeling the lingering warmth on the side of his face. There was more. So, he turned his head and wiped the remaining blood on his shoulder. The poor fellow didn’t make it to the dugout on time.
It was unfortunate really but that was their daily bread. It wasn’t a good idea to dwell too much on things you couldn’t predict nor change and especially when it was a bloke he didn’t even know. No. Heinrich knew better at this point. Feelings like empathy or remorse had to be shut down in the trenches or else you would go mad. They were all dead man walking really. That was what made it bearable. The feeling of having nothing to lose. Heinrich was aware of all of this. Still, he did feel a pang of disgust and then shame. He wasn’t entirely a killing machine after all.
Heinrich gripped his rifle a bit more severely. The Froschfresser were giving them quite the beating since the dusk and now it was almost midday. They were exhausted but the rumbling and whistling of the war drums never ceased. Heinrich just hoped they wouldn’t get buried alive so soon and could give some beating to the stupid French face to face. “It has to be an offensive, doesn’t it?” asked the new Gefreiter. Heinrich didn’t bother looking at him but one of his men answered for him. “It has been what? About 18 hours of that barrage?” Rudolf looked to Heinrich for confirmation. Heinrich did give a curt nod this time. “Give it few more hours, Junge, and the Froschfresser will be here!” Rudolf declared with faked enthusiasm and tugged on his red moustache. The poor boy started shaking even more.
It was just his third day on the front, and he was about to go through his first enemy offensive. This one would last less than others, the poor fellow. Heinrich wasn’t underestimating the poor boy because of his age and Heinrich did have a feeling that the lad wasn’t probably older than 17. Heinrich himself was young. He was freshly 21 years old. But the good fortune just wasn’t on the boy’s side. Either he would prevail and end up a great soldier, or rather survivor, or he would not even last the average service life of a soldier on the western front. Three weeks. It was all really about luck in this dangerous game of Mariage-Spiel.
“Don’t scare the boy too much, Rudolf,” Heinrich warned while the ground shook once more. He wasn’t in a really good mood, but he didn’t want the boy to do something stupid that would put them all in danger. “Look at the positives, Werner. In about two days we will be off the front-line back in the support trenches and then in a week we will be out of them entirely.” Heinrich was aware that based on the screams of agony outside the dugout and never-ending detonations not many of them would actually live long enough to get out of the trenches. Heinrich still managed to lift the corners of his mouth in a hint of a smile. He must have looked terrifying, nevertheless. The blood and guts smeared across his face and soulless eyes. But still that smile, more of a sneer really, plastered across his face.
