My Stories
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A Trench Story |
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5
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The fight for survival!! |
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A Trench Story
Creative
 Created on 12-10-07
 Views(127)
 Story Rating G
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Then everything went quiet. The soldiers, both dead and alive, lay in the dug out like toys on the floor of a child’s bedroom. The shelling had been going on for an hour and a half, no one knew who was alive or dead, even those lying near each other could not tell as they were too scared to move or they wanted the silence to last for ever. Finally Private Peter Johnson got up and stared at the carnage that surrounded him, bodies scattered like leaves on an autumn’s day. Among the bodies were faces he recognized, most were staring mindlessly into the sky, others were shivering. Then he heard a whimper, then a cry, he looked around and found Freddy McDonald, another private, crying over the body of his dead brother, Corporal Daniel McDonald. He was lying on his side but his head was looking up towards the sky. From the look of the wounds it wasn’t the explosion that had killed him (in reality it broke his spine with the pressure so if he had lived he would have been worse off), but it was the shrapnel that impaled him. It looked like a quick death but neither of them knew for sure, really and truly it didn’t matter. It took some time to get Freddy off his dead brother’s body but who would have blamed him. Once that was done, the search for other survivors begun, it turned out that no one was alive. All that surrounded them were dead, lifeless bodies and at times they even came across body parts like heads, feet and hands. The saddest sight though was a hand sticking out of a pile of rubble, the poor soul must have died from suffocation and not from the explosion. After taking ammo from the dead soldiers and saying their final goodbyes, the two privates left their squadron for the last time and they started moving through the lifeless trenches and towards the only area not occupied by Nazi soldiers. They had to lie low as Nazi snipers had their scopes trained on the area looking for the “lucky” survivors, as if they were the Angels of Death looking for those who have lived past their “expiry” date. Freddy and Peter came across from the body of their Lieutenant who had a sniper shot wound in the back of his head. He had fled in the last few minutes of the shelling. The two Privates continued on till the trench suddenly ended due to a collapse of the walls caused by a shell, the only option was to exit the trench and cross into no man’s land. It took a while for the Privates to prepare themselves mentally for the enduring and life threatening challenge of crossing no man’s land. Finally Freddy got up, he looked at Peter and said that if they didn’t do it then, it would never happen and that their bodies would be found rotting among the others. Peter got up and grabbed two grenades from his pack and he threw them into no man’s land. Seconds later there were two terrifying explosions. Hoping the snipers had changed their sights to the explosion, thinking that it was a mine, the two jumped out of the trench and ran with all their remaining strength. They knew that if they didn’t make it there would be no chance of ever seeing their families again or even seeing a view that wasn’t full of craters and lifeless bodies. Suddenly the two were bombarded by a barrage of bullets which appeared to them as flying tears of sadness because, for the two survivors, all felt lost, but a split-second later sense rushed back to them. They jumped into a crater. The gunfire stopped because the enemies’ weapons needed reloading. Peter peered over the rim of the crater and saw that the Nazis were in an abandoned allied trench which was covered with explosives to be remotely detonated. He realized this from a red wire of which he caught sight from the corner of his eye, noting that an explosion in the vicinity of the trench would set off the explosives. Peter threw a grenade into it, but then he realized that he risked Freddy’s and his own life. Freddy realised this too and they both ducked for cover. The grenade went off and the other explosives were triggered and went off too. Shrapnel flew everywhere and Freddy, who dared to look, saw a Nazi helmet flying over him. Finding themselves safe and sound, the two continued their trek through no man’s land for ten minutes. Then they found a platoon of Americans who were heading towards the explosion. The two Privates fainted out of exhaustion and were taken into medical care. Twenty years later, there they were, marching among all the war veterans in remembrance of all the soldiers who had given their lives in the Second World War. As always Freddy McDonald and Peter Johnson both went to the plaque where the names of the members of their squadron were engraved and they sat there for an hour talking as if they were talking to their platoon in person about the happenings of the year that had passed and of all the good times they had shared. The loyalty these two shared to their Squadron was a message from all the soldiers of the past to all the soldiers still to come.
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