[Timmay]

Synopsis: Life in a trench


The one good thing about being moved to the line was the food. It was the one good place where one could get some nice, hot chow. Anywhere behind the line, you were chewing on cardboard bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Grant you, the liver sausage, white bread, and cabbage soup came with a built in risk that at any moment, you could become nothing more than blood mixed with dirt, or a stump in No Man’s Land with your guts hanging out, but it was plenty worth it.


Winter was coming to L’vov. One could see it; the trench would frost over when we woke up, the dead in No Man’s Land would be paler than usually, and the few trees on the battlefield that weren’t reduced to woodchips were starting to die. The days would become darker too, making it hard to see approaching Brits looking to cut our wire.

None of us were looking forward to a new year. The war wasn’t soon to end, even with the various requests on our side for an armistice. As various men on the line said, “That shit ain’t happening.”

Looking back at our situation, it was hard to believe we had a secure border with France only months ago. After the Airborne mishap with the 42nd, things on the front started to change. Each day, the line would be pushed back further and further, until we were near Berlin, then to Konin, then all the way to Lutsk. The Tommies were giving no mercy, and taking every inch of land they could find, bloodlust on their minds. Even worse, every Brit we killed, two would take his place. Every tank we managed to disable, a new, chrome version would ride through No Man’s Land. It was only a matter of months. They would find a hole in the wall, and when that happened, we were done.

Still, through December we held strong. Each British attack built our confidence, experience, and strength as a unit. As casualties increased, so did morale, and in our time of need, we needed quality on the line, not quantity.


During Christmas, we got a nice, unwanted present; a platoon’s worth of completely untrained, young recruits. As the kids went straight into the trench and followed their most basic instincts, we were informed that no more two-week wonders would pollute the field; Greens were sent straight to the front. Being veterans, it would be our job to train them.

The Greenies, for the most part, were idiots. They wouldn’t move when a grenade landed near their feet, they would root in place. When someone in No Man’s Land cried for help, the Green had to play hero and rescue him. When they heard a gunshot, they would raise their heads out of the trench. Just the regular moronic, newcomer things that would cost the kids their lives. Fortunately, for everyone who actually had the slightest clue of what they were doing, this process of conveniently removing the idiots from the line in one of the most painful ways possible made it easier to train the guys who had a shot at survival.

The recruit assigned to me was a weedy, puny little freshman named Dimitri Keshlev. He was about two years younger than me, but a lot more pathetic and frail. The way he acted around the trenches and other guys, a good two-weeks training would have done him a lot of good; he didn’t know how to fire a gun, he wouldn’t talk to anyone, and wouldn’t fight it when people would take his food. He had a lot to learn if he was going to live past a month.

The recruits’ first action came on a really foggy night. There was a slight, freezing drizzle and a biting wind that would howl through the frosted and burnt battlefield. I was the acting sentry for our trenches during the dead man shift. It was about 11:45, meaning my shift was about to end, so I rested my eyes in the sentry tower. Every once in a while, the wind would blow strongly enough test the soldering of the thin, metal walls, stinging my eyes. I thought it would collapse, but somehow it held together. The Soviet government could afford to have giant rallies and build huge military structures in Moscow, but they couldn’t afford a decent steel box.

In the trench, the snipers were sitting in the freezing rain. Occasionally, one of them would shift, and their helmet would gleam in what little light there was. Since most of them were completely untrained as snipers, they followed one simple rule; if you see something, shoot it. If it cries out in English, shoot it again. Simple and easy to remember. It was a law pretty much all of us incorporated, but to the snipers it was sacred; it was pretty much all they had.

It was 11:56 when I first saw some movement. It wasn’t actually me who saw it; it was one of the snipers. I was rubbing sleep from my eyes when I heard a sharp crack, then a shout. I looked out of the tower, I could see four or five Tommies cutting our wire, signaling for their friends to come and help.

I loaded my rifle, thinking of how bad my luck was that there was only four minutes left in my shift. I aimed at one of the black figures and squeezed of two shots. The first one missed badly, but the second one found the Brit’s shoulder, and he wheeled to the ground. I turned my attention to the next Sapper, who was to busy cutting all of our wires to notice the bullets. Once again, I aimed for the man’s head, and squeezed another couple of shots until he fell to the ground. I could tell the man had stamina, because I hit him three times before he collapsed.

This continued for about 10 minutes until the Tommies ignored our wire completely and decided a frontal assault would be the most effective plan of action. And so they charged through the raw and devastated ground, taking heavy casualties from the various DP-28s, Mosin Nagants, and AK-47s. Occasionally, one or two would make it to our trench and lob in a grenade, making everyone scamper. The bomb would go off, and the fight would continue.

Eventually, their commander saw they had no chance, and called the remaining soldiers hiding in shell-holes or on their bellies firing at us back to their trench. As they ran back, we rushed them, bayoneting, shooting, and beating everyone we could find. The flash of steel and blood lit up the cold night, as the shouts of dying men reached the heavens. The knives and flesh would meet, crimson hitting the dirt as men were returned back to the clay.

Even the recruits were having a hell of a time; when one bothered to actually look at them, one could expect to see them decapitating an Englishman or putting a bullet in a Tommy’s head. Even Dimitri was joining in on the barbaric slaughter. He and five other guys would corner a Brit, take his weapon, and let him run. They would count to five, fire, and walk to another cowering Brit.

When we reached the British line, our casualties were a mere three men, while the entire English encampment was wiped out of existence. We took their trench and all the spoils that came with it, including water, food, and weapons.

However, not five minutes after we sacked their trench, heavy shells came upon us from the English guns. We all panicked, looking for a dugout or anything to hide ourselves. Eventually, we found a British supply dugout, and hid everyone we could fit inside. We locked the door, and were forced to listen to the knocks and cries for help. As the shelling went on, these calls for assistance ceased, along with the bombs that dropped into the trench.

Everyone who managed to squirm into the bunker stepped out, and were immediately bombarded with the nauseating stench of blood and death. Everywhere you looked, you could expect someone’s brains sprayed against the trench walls. For about a half hour, we inspected the damage, trying to identify the dead. Before the bombing we had lost three men. After the bombing, we lost 56; nearly half of our strength.


Despite our Captain’s request to get moved off of the line, we all had to stay. Now, to most of us, all the food in the world couldn’t make us stay here; it was terrible, worse than usual. The British finally decided that they would exact revenge, constantly hammered us with all they had; 10 inch shells, gas, fighters, the whole nine yards and then some. By the time January was winding to a close, the battlefield didn’t even look like a battlefield; it looked like the ninth ring of hell; frozen, windy, and burned all at the same time. Even worse was the green cloud that hung above the trench at all times; it cause you to cough so incessantly that you would eventually start vomiting blood and stomach acid. It made traversing the trench impossible without a gas mask, but for some, wearing a mask wasn’t possible; they would get to claustrophobic, rip off the mask, and breath the deadly air.

I felt worse for Dimitri; when I came into the war, I was eased into combat. I started with small skirmishes, and moved onto the giant confrontations like the Siege of Berlin and the Attack on Paris. Poor Dimitri, along with the other recruits, was exposed to the horrifying truth of war immediately. It was a wake-up call for them to witness first-hand that war wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.


It was the eve of February, and everyone left from the fighting was on the edge of the trench. We were expecting a British attack that was supposedly going to end our foothold in L’vov once and for all, but at the same time we were focused on an aerial dogfight between one of our birds and a British Spitfire. It was damn near impossible to tell which plane was which because of the darkness, but we had the distinct feeling that our aircraft was taking a beating.

It was a rather low altitude fight on a rather gloomy day; the mist that had taken the month of December and January refused to leave. Because of the constant gas attacks by the British, the mist and poison would lazily mix together to form a beautiful but lethal miasma. A few men had masks on, but most of us had become so adapt to the toxin that we simply coughed once in a while.

“I wonder how this is gunna affect us long term?” Dimitri asked me, in a kind of stupor that signified his exhaustion.

“It won’t. If smoking hasn’t done anything to me, then that certainly won’t,” I replied watching both the line and the airborne skirmish.

Suddenly, one of the planes started smoking and crashed to the ground, right between the English trench and our own. “Oh, I sure as shit hope that wasn't ours...” Dimitri whispered into my ear.

However, as the conqueror swooped away quite eloquently towards the British line, the rest of us heard a shout come from No Man’s Land. At first, it sounded similar to a horse being beaten, but then we recognized it as heavily accented Russian.

The man was in excruciating pain; that much was a given. Every two or three seconds, he would call out for help in broken Russian, interrupted by brief fits of Armenian or some other language. It was clear this man wasn’t from the USSR.

After about a minute of his painful cries filling the already toxic air, one medic snapped. He jumped out of the trench and sprinted over to the pilot, medical equipment in hand.

When the English had put enough bullets in him to set a demonstration for any other Soviet who dare run over to the plane, we all tried to shift our concentration to the British trench, where the attack was going to come.

But it didn’t. All night, we stayed awake, the moans and sobs of the pilot still poisoning our minds. Every one of us wanted to go, to help-or at least silence-him, but we all knew what would happen. So we sat. And we waited. And we scratched our asses. All just so we could shoot at the British soldiers. But the cries from the man murmured through the wind. It filled the atmosphere. It made it impossible to breathe. To think. To watch. To wait. To open fire. To run.

Life in the trench was impossible.

[Masa]

You know Timmay, as people, you and I may clash from time to time, but as a writer I must say good work. It was a good piece, very good, I enjoyed your use of military-lingo useful for identification as well as parralels to most viewpoints from the British. Trenchwar is hell, and your descriptions really brought that to life, from the smell of the gore to the visual devastation. I have noted no irritants, and find this a very decent read. Cheers Timmay, good work!

[jaziz69]

Hi, first time post =D. Your piece seems very well informed, and it would be interesting to know if you purposely researched trench warfare or just had a strong prior knowledge/interest in the issue. You describe the physical of the atrocities of trench life in vivid detail and i find myself creating an informed image. However, personally, i would like to hear more from the feelings/mentality of the soldiers, possibly from use of an omniscient narrator? You explore the destruction of the physical, however the destruction of the mental was just as catastrophic, if not worse, an sometimes i feel distanced from the characters, as i can only empathise with this situation. A stronger relationship could possibly be achieved through exploration of emotions, although obviously this is entirely my own opinion. I realise it is a 1st person narrative, but this character does not appear to be suffering any mental trauma, although i realise he may be battle hardened. Forgive my vagueness, but the piece sometimes felt flat. I love the character Dimitri and the concept of the "greens", also actually the fact that it's from a German perspective. I would love know how Dimitri is feeling, though i suppose that is just my narratorial preference. You have a situation here where you could develop some strong characters, and take them on a mission or something of the sort, i would like to see Dimitri and his "newbie" friends in tactical combat!

Thanks for the read, Jay

[jaziz69]

forgive me, **Soviet perspective**

[Timmay]

hey jay and thanks for reading.

Im gunna be quite honest, ive nevr been good with emotions. whenever i try to convey them, it just becomes this one word "and he was horrified" type crap that i cant stand. I figure, if i can't really write about emotion, I just write about what is happening. i leave what is happening in everyone's mind to the reader; i write, and they interpit.

As for the trench warfare trivia, it was stuff i picked up from reading. As far as actual trench warfare goes on, i read storm of steel and all quiet on the western front ( both really good), and was, for all intents and purposes, impressed at how simple but lethal it was. I also used trench warfare in this story to convey what a nosedive everything took; trench warfare is tacticless. You rush at them, they rush at you, etc. It was only really effective at slaughtering tons of people. Trenches themselves only really lasted to WWI, then were only used by defenders. What im trying to show is that because no one gets any training, people are left to blindly charge at the enemy.

Either way, thanks for reading.

P.S. C'mon now masa. i dont think we but heads that often

[tarotwolf]

Very powerful piece. I was going to comment that trench warfare of this caliber was not as common in II as it was in I but I see that you mentioned that in your comments. The only other thing that struck me was the fact that the Soviets and the British were on the same side in both world wars. Doesn't distract for the imagery and quality of writing, just something that made my brain go "yeah, but..."

Good stuff all in all, Thanks for sharing.

[Timmay]

Just in case, and for future readers, this is a completely fake war. think of WWI in a more updated setting, one where America isnt involved, for unknown reasons.