The long guns are firing again. I crouch a little deeper in my narrow trench, between Harry and Murphy and a new kid who's been here ten minutes and is scheduled to die in twenty more.
I've never seen the long guns firing - but I've seen pictures of them. Monsters the size of trees, next to men the size of ants. Shells the size of houses. And when they fire, that hollow roaring bang echoes through the valleys and the plains. I shiver, and Harry pats my shoulder. He knows what it's like - he's been through five attacks, I've been through three. Don't really know why - by all the laws, we were supposed to end up like the new kid - dead the moment we jump out of the trenches.
I'm not a poet - not even a particularly good writer. I expect they'll read these words when they find my journal on my cold, dead body after one more cold, pointless battle.
The enemy lines are two hundred yards away. Just close enough that we can shoot at them, yell at them, and sometimes wave nervously. I sometimes wonder what poor devil is in the other trench, shooting, yelling, and waving nervously back. I suppose I'll never know.
I feel sorry for the new kid - nobody wants to look at him, nobody wants to talk to him. Nobody wants to touch him. Why? Because he's a dead man. He probably knows it too. Nobody wants to get Death on him - it's bad luck. And nobody wants to lose any more friends.
"Writing again?" Murphy asks me as I scribble. I nod at him. We all have ways of getting rid of stress, waiting for the long guns to stop firing. That's the signal, you see. The signal that we attack. The signal that a lot of us are going to die.
Harry's flipping a coin, and catching it. The new kid is just staring at the Enemy's trenches. He'll get used to it. He'll be seeing a lot of it, no matter which side of the mud he finishes this fight on.
I write a lot in my journal. Sometimes I write to my loved ones. Sometimes I write about what it would be like to have loved ones. Not much time to found a family, in the army. I wrote a silly little poem the other day. I read it to the company, and everyone laughed. Blackpool threw his head back and caught a slug in the throat.
I don't write poems anymore.
The forest is quieting down now - the long guns are ceasing fire. I'd better put this away someplace safe.
Recovered from the body of an unknown soldier. 23 July 2341, 19th Battle of Galosfor.
(This message has been edited by ElGuapo7 (edited 09-24-2003).)
