The Faces on my Grave

At 89 years old, Arthur McGraw had seen many things throughout his life, horrible things and tragic things and beautiful things. And as a veteran he’s also suffered from severe PTSD most of his adult life. Even today at 89 years young, old Arthur still had recurrent nightmares of he and the Bosche in the trenches. His damp feet sinking lower and lower into the mud, circled by frantic and hungry rats. His brothers looking past him as he’s a ghost, the shadow of a filthy toothy smile on their faces. They called it the thousand yard stare, something that afflicted most of them, apparently. And Arthur couldn’t stand that.

The men plagued by this burden never made it out alive, their senses too preoccupied by what no other man could see. Some made up theories about this condition, they said they could see the dead or even bear witness to the moment of their own demise. But all of this were mere superstitions, something the men tended to heavily after months and years away from their family and their lives. Away from fresh air and smokeless skies. And no one knew for sure what exactly they were looking at, but they stared through their brothers in arms and through the dirt of the trenches and beyond the no man’s land and beyond even the countryside ravaged by the war until their gaze became lost somewhere unknown and never returned to them...

Although, recently the nightmares had begun to fade away. And his memories of the trenches along with them. It all felt so far away, so many years ago. And those memories were finally gathering dust and being locked away in the farthest drawer of his subconscious mind.

He woke up as usual in his single bed in his small, fairly decorated room of the rest home he’d been living in for a little over two years, now. His wife had passed away a while back and their only daughter who still gave a rat’s ass about her father had chosen to re-home the old man, to which he did not object. His third born growing older herself and suffering from bad arthritis could not carry on caring for her old man. But he was content, here. Despite the ever lasting expression of boredom and half closed eyes glued to the staff’s faces and the leaking walls and the subtle scent of feces, everything was just fine. He ate three meals a day and a snack in the evening. He had a heated room in the winter and an air conditioner in the summer and even a walking aid. It could have been so much worse. He could have still been lying in the trenches with three or four of his toes falling off with gangrene and all of his life being only a dream.

It was March and the earth had started to thaw a few days ago and it was the most inhumane condition a man could live in. Arthur had been rotting in the trenches for a few weeks already, his boots sinking into the thick, lumpy mud, his feet beneath the leather damp to the bones. The soldiers and himself had not washed for weeks and the stench of their and the rats’ shit and filth lingered in the air from miles away. The rats were trotting about their feet, desperate for a bite to eat. Some of the unfortunate animals had been crushed to death by the men’s boots and the other rodents left alive had started to gnaw off at their comrades’ bones. And so it was war for the rats as well and the living ate their dead in order to survive. Not unlike some men, who had been pushed too far inside a foreign country’s wilderness during winter, would tend to do given the opportunity not to starve to death.

Arthur lost three toes during the following days. He had considered himself lucky enough not to have lost his entire foot or even an eye. Unlike so many others all about him, falling like flies when the bullets were whistling against the wind...