The Writers' Circle

"Right, now that's the way to fight a war." Silky took a long, last drag from his smoke and flicked it away into the ankle deep mud that made up the trench bottom. He exhaled deeply and leaned against the outer wall, resting his head back so he could keep his eyes on the small shapes high above dancing in the cloudless sky. "No muss, no fuss, and a warm bed at night." 
He watched the flying machines dance for a while longer, each diving and twisting in turn. He could see the thin white tails they sported when their guns sang, but the sound was lost to him. Then it was over. The vanquished eagle leaving a thick black trail as it fell. Silky watched it's fall until it vanished from view behind the battered sandbagged parapet facing the enemy. 
"That was something, wasn't it?" Jones asked. 
"Yep." Silky held his position as he closed his eyes, letting the afternoon sun warm his mud stained face. "You owe me five cigarettes." 
"How did you know which one was going to win anyway?" Jones asked as he held out the winnings. "You haven't lost yet." 
"I get a feeling about these things." 
"Yeah, well, it's down right freakish if you ask me." 
"I didn't," Silky opened his eyes and sloshed off down the trench towards the jakes. "Remember," he said over his shoulder, "you are the one who suggested the bet." 
"Bastard." 
Silky kept walking, his feet raw and rotting, never having been dry in the last three days. Shame about Jones. Silky had the feeling, and he was never wrong. 

The barrage started at midnight. The sky to the West, dark as pitch one minute was a sudden sheet of pure flame as hundreds of cannon roared out death at the same instant. Over time the sounds of artillery were lost in the bowel-twisting thunder across the barrens. The muzzle flashes lost to the man made lighting of detonation. 
Jones was on watch; his body crouched low on the firing step so just his eyes were over the trench lip. He held tightly to the ladder as the tidal wave of impacts half a mile off caused the sandbag and mud wall to ripple and slide. 
"You know they make periscopes for that?" Silky asked. 
"Cah!" Jones spun around. "You scared the life out of me." 
"Sorry." Silky tried to ignore Jones' poor choice of words. "Couldn't sleep." 
"Them's the breaks." Jones turned back to his duty. 
"How long we know each other?" "What?" "How long have we been friends?" "You haven't been my friend since you bagged my girl before we left Paris." 
"She wasn't your girl." Silky put his head down and cupped his hands to light his cig. "As I remember it, you were short the scratch. A girl's got to make a living." 
"I said it once and I'll say it again, you're a bastard." Anger, not malice. 
"Been what, two years?" 
"Bout right." Jones half-turned to face him. "What's this about then?" 
"Nothing." 
"Got the jitters about the morning?" 
"No, just can't sleep." 
"Something you want to tell me?" 
"No." Silky left it at that and slogged back to the dugout. It was going to be a long night. 
"Okay, boys, the barrage is going to be lifted in a few minutes; then it's over the top." The Lieutenant couldn't have been older than twenty. The fuzz on his chin that gave him an angelic aura in the dawn light didn't even need daily attention yet. "You've all had breakfast then, right?" He looked up and down the line and seeing no negatives he continued. "Well, then. Good luck and remember the plan. Stay together and mind the wire." 
"Right!" The Battalion Sergeant Major started. "Check your weapons! Fix bayonets! Last man in the trench will have watch all night." The motivation continued as he walked the line away from the two friends. 
"One more time then?" Jones smiled a little too widely at Silky. 
"One more time." Silky responded. One last time. Five minutes later the whistle blew and the race was on. In a mad rush three hundred men hit the ladders and stepped into death's land. The last of the shells were still falling on the German lines as they formed their line and started their run. Titanic fountains of mud and gore rose into the air as they struck home. 
The dark beauty of it always amazed Silky. Nothing lived here. Not one bird. No one blade of grass. There was nothing here but a dark, sticky moonscape of mud. No one could make good time on the run due to the countless hidden holes that reached out to grab the unwary, to hold them, to add them to their collection of rotting corpses that lay just beneath the surface. 
Not all of them were beneath the ground. The dead were lonely, too. Their cold hands reached out to the living, skin hanging in shreds from the few intact bones. Dead faces stared at the sky with sightless sockets, their eyes long ago fallen victim to rats or carrion birds, or lay pressed into the earth as if attempting to escape into a grave they never would own. Mud caked boots splashed into standing pools that were more blood than water. This place was death itself on earth. Or had this battleground left the earth .... 
The battalion ran on. They were a quarter of the way now. The rain of shells had finally abated on the German lines. How long would it be now before their deaths started? How long until the wall of lead fell? How long until this place chose it's newest residents? 
Silky ran beside Jones. He would be there for him. If there was anything he could do he would, but the feeling left little doubt. 
Then the wait was over. A hundred yards from the enemy wire the first of the guns opened up. The sound of tearing canvas tried to warn them, but there was nothing to be done. Stopping was not an option. Cover there was, but not enough. 
Screams. Screams as the gunners found their mark. Screams as the thin streams of death sliced their way through a yielding tide of flesh. Blood and things less savory splashed Silky's face as young Miller, two feet to his left had his life cut short. So short. He had lied about his age. His story ended sixteen years and five days after it started. There was no time to mourn; just to run. Run until they reached the trench, then to hack and stab their way to victory or death. How much death was victory worth? 
More were falling. Seemingly at random a man would jerk as if on a leash, and then fall into his new home. The dead cared not for the mud, and they were welcome. No-man's land was always hungry. 
Then Jones' time came. Silky heard a sick meaty slap as the first round from the Maxim gun hit Jones' leg. His friend did a complete flip as the terrible missile shattered his femur. The second hit him just before he hit the ground, striking him in the chest. A dime-sized hole appeared above Jones' right blouse pocket. The shocking crimson standing out against the gray/brown mud that hid his uniform. 
He never made a sound. 
Silky staggered to a stop and knelt next to his comrade and looked for signs of life. Nothing. He had just begun to reach for Jones, to take him back out of this mad place. The chaos around him forgotten, all that mattered was his fallen friend; then the Lieutenant fell on him. The young gentleman's body broken and gaping. The boy's weight knocked him down and pinned him briefly. 
Shoving the corpse aside, he looked around. Less than half the battalion remained. Without orders the attack was faltering. Men withered under the murderous fire and those still breathing began to move back, slowly at first, then faster, until they were running. 
Silky gave Jones one last look before he too turned back and fled for the stinking crevice they called safety. Jones lay on his back, eyes closed as if asleep, the young Lieutenant's body draped over his abdomen, face down. Then he was gone. Left with his new friends, in his new home. 

Jones began screaming an hour later.
It wasn't unusual. On almost every push someone got left behind that wasn't happy about it. The problem was that this time it was Jones. It wasn't that it was his friend. This kind of thing happened to friends in this war. It was the feeling. He had been so sure. He had never been wrong before. 
Not that it mattered. Jones would be dead soon enough. It would just take some time. He felt no guilt about leaving him. It was his time, the feeling told him so. 
There was talk about going to get him, there always was; but nothing came of it. Earlier in the war such things were done. The other side would let the stretcher-bearers out into the death field to claim the unwilling, but not now. Too much had happened. Humanity had little place in this war. All they could do was wait. 
And wait. 
And wait. 
By the next morning Silky was on edge. How could Jones have lasted this long? Some time during the night there had been an attempt to get him after all. Some of the fresh meat had been unable to bear the noise and had set out against orders. Three of them left; one came back, and he had to be sent to the rear. Something happened to him out there. When he went out the night before, he had been a young man with thick, ebony hair. What came back was different. His hair was snow white and thinning and his once clear skin was yellow and loose about its frame. His eyes told of horror unlike the everyday kind found in this war. His eyes spoke of lost sanity. What must happen in the death's lands at night? 
By noon Silky was pacing. By dinner he had smoked the last of his vast horde of smokes. And then his time came for watch: two hours, from 2100 to 2300; alone; listening to Jones. 
He made it until 2230. Every so often one side or the other would send up a flare. It's stark white light turning the merciful dark into a broken hell-scape. Shapes that were bad enough in the light were made so much worse by the shadows cast by the slowly flickering light as it drifted to earth. With every flare Jones grew louder. His screams lacked words. They were just pain given sound. A torment that should be heard only in hell. 
During the last two starbursts Silky had located Jones. He lay on the up-slope of a crater with his back to him. Only his head and shoulders were visible in the half-light; they were but a silhouette, dark against t pale vista of death. Occasionally one arm would grasp for something, then fall useless once more. 
On the third counterfeit dawn, Silky shot Jones. His first shot took the back of this friend's head away in an unreal cloud of muted colors, lit by the false white sun as it hovered above the dead earth and it burned itself out to join the other broken, cold, and lifeless in the muddy ground. 
Blessedly, the screaming stopped. 
When the Sergeant ran up to Silky's post, he was sitting on the fire step laughing as he smoked the last few puffs of a pilfered smoke. 
"And what was all that about, then?" "I saw something ... in the wire. They must have gotten Jones." 
"Right then. Carry on." And away he went. No one was fooled. Everyone knew what Silky had done, but these things happen in this war. 
Blessed heaven, the screaming had stopped! 

It had been a week and a new bunch of "boots" had filled their ranks. The unbloodied outnumbered the veterans two-to-one, but that was not to last long. They were going over again. 
Silky had changed since Jones. The feeling was everywhere. It was as if everything was dying. When he looked at the new kids, all he saw were corpses. Where there were fresh smiles and clean uniforms, he saw entrance wounds and maggots. He had quit even trying to sleep. And now he waited for another whistle. 
Then it came. 
Once more into hell; a different, more urgent hell than the lice-infested filth hole in which they lived. That hell wanted you alive, wanted you to suffer; it lived on misery and fear. This hell thirsted for blood and the flesh of the young. 
The Fritz were at their guns quickly and Silky's battalion had barely taken ten steps before the first one fell. As before, they pushed on. On through the mud. Running over broken bodies, feet sure by long experience on mud, slipping on entrails and quivering bodies still warm. On into the open jaws of death. 
Silky didn't notice the carnage around him. He ran as he had before. To him they were all dead already. He had the feeling. He would run until the attack faltered, then fall back as before. Fear was not something he thought about. Death wasn't for him, the feeling would have warned him; he was sure of it. He ran on with little care as to where he was going; that is until he fell into the hole. 
His face came out of the mud with a regretful sucking sound. He had lost his helmet and something had hold of his foot. Not to worry. He would work that out. He stuck his head up over the rise and saw his unit start to fall back and turned to retrieve his stuck right boot. His screams were carried away with the clatter of weapon's fire and the last gasps of the dying.
"Welcome home."  Jones smiled through ragged bloody teeth.