Sorrow of a Soldier The bombardment had begun to draw out. The shells whistled overhead and crashed into the trenches like meteorites sent by the wrath of some malevolent god. Mud was violently thrown up into in the air. Sergeant Stanley Johnson looked on and sighed with gritted teeth as men ran forwards and backwards in his trench, carting the dead and dying like gruesome transports. One man was blistered, the white boils almost pulsing with sickness, blood pouring out of his mouth as he screamed in pain. The gas attack had been the worst the sergeant had seen before. Even now the rats were screeching and rustling. He had a sudden thought to draw his bayonet and skewer them, ‘You never know, might end up tasting better than whatever meat they feed us, god forbid that’s beef’ he thought. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Although he was a sergeant and the men recognised him as that, he had torn off his crisp, white stripes long ago. It was common knowledge that snipers targeted the officers and sergeants were no exception. He had been in a close encounter with one such sniper previously, at a time before the trench lines were fully etched into the ground, when he was sent on patrol in a nearby forest with his platoon. He had lost three good, experienced men in that engagement. Not just men; brothers. They were family to him. His blood boiled even now when he thought about it, about how the first had died instantly, a shot to the head. They had dashed for cover but the second was too slow and has been singled out. Sergeant Johnson could still picture his face as the man crawled to him, crying out for help, the blood trailing as he tried with the last strength he had within him to reach the officer. Johnson was almost like a beacon of hope for the man as his life began to vanish from him. Johnson could not break cover, he understood this but still knew that there must have been another way, any way to save him. The third had jumped out of cover and drawn the sniper whilst the others watched the muzzle flash and executed the enemy with a barrage of .303 fire. The most honourable death you could have in this time of dishonourable killings. The loose, lifeless corpse of the revealed sniper hung from the tree that acted as his vantage point, his head resting gently on a wooden outstretched arm. Johnson was convinced that he had failed his men that day, but repeatedly told himself he must avenge them. Sadly, no matter what he told himself, nothing helped the guilt. The men. His men. They trusted him without fail and he recalled a saying he had heard his drill sergeant tell them during training, ‘A good soldier follows without question, a good officer leads without doubt.’ Both him and his valiant soldiers had followed this to the word yet, was this a lie too? Stanley Johnson never expected war to become a part of his life. At least not like this. This war was said to be an adventure, one of bravery and honour. How wrong could they be? There is no honour here. Only death. He left everything behind: his parents, his job, his life. The sergeant promotion had come quicker than expected, the previous sergeant had been killed on one of Johnson’s first engagements with their adversaries. Sergeant Johnson had, at least to his superiors and the men he commanded, almost all the qualities of the perfect soldier: courage, honesty, and upheld self-decency. Now Johnson sat in his dugout, cleaning his Short Magazine Lee-Enfield. The shells and gunshots no longer bothered him. He thought back to when he used to be affected by the crashes and harsh cracks and how the sounds made his skin crawl. He scoffed at how pathetic this seemed now. If nothing else, this war had hardened him, to a point where he had seen everything. Nothing bothered him anymore. Nothing except the death of his men, and all those that fought around him. They were heroes. Johnson just hoped they would be remembered in that way. He could smell the putrid scent of rot and of decay and of the overflowing latrines. It seemed that his nostrils had been hardened as much as the rest of him. The putrid stench still stung his nose, however. The mud around him was shaken and flung, stinging the soldiers’ eyes. Johnson was so intertwined with his rifle that he didn’t see the man before him.
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