Now for the main event, another entry into my ongoing First World War series. Without further ado...
Shellshock
In the near silence, Robson was almost calm. It was the
quietest quiet he could remember since England, and for once, Smith wasn’t
barking orders. It wasn’t that he disliked the corporal, but he wasn’t overly
fond of him, either. Something about the man seemed to be shouting at any
moment, always shouting. Orders.
It could be worse, he imagined, and Smith hardly
overworked his men, but he was simply so different,
somehow, from this place. As much as he had tried to drum into Robson that
class didn’t matter in their unit, that he wouldn’t be treated any differently
just because he ‘wasn’t landed’, it still seemed to make its presence felt.
Smith’s bunk and desk were always pristinely tidy, Robson’s own bunk a mess, a
place to sleep at night and store his meagre belongings in the day. Smith
always took duties himself, and Robson was always last to be picked.
Class doesn’t
matter? He thought bitterly. Yes it
bloody well does. Why else am I the one sitting round with nothing to do while
all you rich boys get the real action? Why else are you always ‘volunteering’
for whatever you can get your privileged hands on? Why else am I always on the
godforsaken morning watch where NOTHING EVER HAPPENS?
***
Smith sipped the tea, and immediately spat, subtly as he
could. Cold, tasteless and somehow dry.
Anders could make a better cup. Even Johnson, and he avoided the stuff like the
plague. For an officer’s mess, this was appalling. His eyes flicked back up to
the Major.
“So, Smithy, how’s it going with the lads down at the
front, eh?” the moustached officer asked, his multiple chins beginning to
wobble as he spoke. It was only the difference in rank that kept Smith from
laughing to himself.
“Smith, please, if you don’t mind, sir. And there’s
nothing to report. Still the same mess as last week, still underequipped, still
outnumbered, and still running low on biscuits. What the men haven’t eaten, the
rats have. Maybe you’d like to see for yourself?” he concluded, the hostility
he was trying so hard to suppress creeping into his last words.
He knew the Major would never accept the offer, but he
always made it. Every week, every meeting, he would always ask. If ever he did come down to the front, and spend a
few days in the trenches, Smith couldn’t help but feel they would find several
of their more pressing problems relieved. He hid a smile as he imagined the
Major cramming himself into a too-small bunk, petrified of the rat that circled
his feet.
“Oh, no, we couldn’t do that. Not at all proper, you see,
Smithy?” Smith clenched and unclenched his fist, noting the Major’s use of the
epithet. Clearly, they were both playing mind games. He was determined not to
lose. “How about that new chap we sent down last week? He’s a keen one, isn’t
he? Roberts, or something like that.”
“Robson, sir, and yes he is. A little too keen, if you ask me. I’ve tried to
keep him off-duty, otherwise I’m afraid he might try and storm the German front
himself.”
“So he’s not seen action yet?”
“No, sir, not a shell, not a bullet, not a bayonet, so
long as I can help it.”
***
There was something unfamiliar in the air, Robson noted.
Too high-pitched and whining to be a bird, too loud to be the wind, and too
distant to be a whistling passer-by. On and on it droned, higher and higher,
and then lower, lower, lower, lower-
The muddy bank behind him erupted, a spewing geyser of
mud and fire and a deafening sound and a searing heat and a sudden force that
threw him back against the sandbags. Blind, deaf, and winded, Robson fell to
the floor, limbs suddenly shuddering in a bizarre parody of motion. His heart
hammered, machinegun-fast, and the blood that pulsed beat by beat around his
shaking body boiled.
Another whine-BOOM,
and more dirt sprang up, further away, covering the sun. As his hearing
returned, Robson heard screaming, and only after two more explosions shook the
world did he realise it was his own. He still didn’t know what was happening,
or why, or how he was alive or what was happening. Every inch of his body cold
feel how real this was, but his brain had not yet caught up.
Slowly, as more gaping holes opened up and the screaming
went on, Robson climbed to his feet, juddering hands hauling himself up on
split sandbags. A searing pain in his left arm refused to subside, but it faded
to a dull, shrill blaring too painful to ignore or acknowledge. It was just there.
He had been trained, he realised, to react to shelling.
He had been trained to be shot at, hunkered in a muddy hole and powerless. He
had been trained to storm a trench through a hail of bullets. But nothing and
no one had trained him for this sheer insanity.
Step by step, with the world falling apart around him,
Robson staggered down the trench, too blind to step on duckboards and wading
his way through the ankle-deep mud. The only sounds were screaming explosions
and exploding screams, red and white and fiery screams. There was no sky, only
sharper pain on unshielded too-wide eyes, and no ground, only a shaking,
shattering world tearing itself apart.
He was somewhere, and nowhere. Too real and not real
enough. Yelling and silent. Loudquiet, runningwalking, deadalive, he inched
along what reality he could see, no purpose other than to live. To escape. To
end this madness.
After a minute day week year lifetime, he felt something
give way beneath him. The ground fell away and left him suspended, for an
instant, in nothingness. Something hurt and something else didn’t and he didn’t
know which was which. Vision became sound became pain became thought, and he
plummeted, down into the cold hot water mud below. The last thing he remembered
was something gripping, snatching at his arms, one more pain in the torment.
***
“He’s coming around, sir.” Johnson whispered, and Smith
looked up from the papers he wasn’t reading, at Robson’s shaking, wide-eyed
shell. Not a shell, not a bullet, not a
bayonet, so long as I can help it. The shame of failure was a deep wound
that had constantly gnawing at him, every second since he had returned to the
dugout to see Robson, gibbering and shaking in the bunk.
Robson’s eyes were too open, the blank stare of a madman.
His fingers danced an insane jig against his thighs, his foot tapped out of
rhythm, a bizarre, dissonant tempo. The flesh wound in his left arm, a deep
gouge of frayed skin and torn muscle, was the least of his worries, already
treated as best they could. It could scar, but he would live.
“W…wh…whereamI?” Robson muttered, lips barely parting,
jaw trembling. “D…d…de...dead.” His mouth split, forced apart. “Deeeaaaaaaad!
Deeeeeeeaaaaaaaaad!”
“No, not dead yet, lad.” Johnson replied, steadying his
shaking arms. “Not dead yet.”
***
He could still hear the screaming, a distant wail that he
somehow knew was still his own. The colours faded into one, the bright vista
replaced with a muddy haze. There was
another noise creeping under the yells, a paler, smoother noise, and a shape face moved in the blur, lighter than the surrounding mass of brownredgreen.
Something moved, an arm, his own, and a sharp pain
followed as it hit something else. His fingers were fire, flickering flames,
tapping shell bursts on the wall. His breath was exploding, every shallow
inhalation was shrapnel down his throat. His eyes could not close, blasted
open, split sandbags spilling tears. Taste was blood and ash in his mouth.
The noises in waves rose and fell, sometimes loudquiet,
sometimes quietloud. Once, the blurs turned sharp, stabbing lights in the dark,
and then the soft shapes returned and he slept with open eyes. Slept and
dreamed and prayed, and in the brief respite between nightmares, he thought he
understood.
***
Author's Notes:
- This piece was written with no brief other than the initial concept, but it does revisit some themes of earlier posts. I've made heavy use of the sensory bombardment that is synaesthesia in this piece, in an altogether more active way than the last time it featured heavily.
- I've played with language a lot here, blending words and in places throwing punctuation and syntax aside. This is intentional, to add to the sense of sheer confusion I want to convey.
- In terms of structure, I'm not entirely sure whether this piece is better with or without the interludes featuring Smith. On one hand, it breaks up the three phases of the main narrative nicely and also ties it in with the ongoing story, and also foreshadows the conclusion and adds context. However, I feel the piece may have ended up too longer and cumbersome, and would work just as well without it. As part of an ongoing narrative, I'll certainly keep it, but I have a feeling it may detract from the individual impact of this piece.
That's all for today, I have another WW1 piece to post tomorrow that, in a way, brings an element of this story full circle. There's plenty more to come, though.
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