The Soldier
Rain poured into our trench, the mud and slush were agonizing as it hit our raw bodies,
already in pain from the attacking sores and scabs.
It started as merely a dream. As they say, every dream is a possible reality. For me, it was to
fight. To represent. To become, a soldier. But as I stared along the labyrinth of trenches
spanning out in front of me, my thoughts betrayed me: was this really what I had dreamed
so passionately to become? Just another tool to be used in battle- just another corpse
buried in the soil I was crouching on. I hated myself for these thoughts; thinking about my
childhood was always like standing near fire: warm at first. But get too close and it hurts too
much.
A reflection of the murky puddles riddling the ground around me, the sky was a veil of grey
and gloom- an impenetrable barrier between the Earth and the Heavens. The clouds were
black. Lumbering above our regiment, they were symbols of death, a constant reminder of
our mortality.
Then there was the smell. Stinking mud mingled with rotting corpses, lingering gas, open
latrines, wet clothes and unwashed bodies was all my nostrils could feast on. An
unbearable, overpowering stench.
The frequent, familiar squeaking of rats regularly disrupted the rhythm of the rain. Rats. Just
the name brought back nightmares. Just the name brought back flashbacks of one of my
most horrific experiences. It was another day, another tedious routine. On patrol duty, I
witnessed a few rats running from under dead corpses’ greatcoats. Nothing unusual,
although these were enormous ones, fat with human flesh. Curious, I stepped towards one
of the bodies. A fatal mistake. His helmet had rolled off. The man displayed a grimacing face,
stripped of flesh; the skull bare, the eyes devoured, just two rotten gaping holes and from
the yawning mouth leapt a bulging, bloated rat.
So preoccupied was I in this memory that neither my eyes nor my ears registered the grimy
figure trudging through the sludge calling out my name.
“Sam,” his raspy voice called. “Gotta do a lice check, now.”
Then he uttered words which only reverberated inside my eardrums: “Off with the helmet.”
Stuttering, my voice wavered as I replied, “Already got it done, sir, when I were done sentry
dooty, sir.”
He grunted an almost inhuman sound, nodded in acknowledgement and retreated back into
his decaying den.
I never took my helmet off because it was the only thing hiding my feminine curls.