Tower and Town, December 2017 (view the full edition)The Trenches“One minute” rasped the officer. My breathing started to quicken forming a misty cloud, my numbed fingers icily gripped my gun, my ripped coat flapped in the wind, “Thirty seconds,” wheezed the officer, his eyes focusing on nothing but the broken rungs on the mud-stricken ladder. My emotions skipped from sad to confused to hurt over and over again, like my head was pressing the repeat button. I felt like a blank piece of paper lost in whirling winds, sad and lonely. I knew I should have been blown over by grief but instead I felt overthrown with guilt, by not being sad because I didn’t believe it, that this was it, I wasn't to live any longer. Wind whipped my cheeks as sleet cut through my already battered skin. Mother would be proud of me, I kept telling myself, mother would be proud of me. “Ten seconds,” spluttered the officer, the confidence that he once filled the other men with was weeping steadily out. I almost became unconscious with fear, the emotions which I had shut out came flooding back, sweeping me into an ocean of horror. “Five” The guns in the background had almost become soothing. “Four” the only regular sound that I ever heard. “Three” the many hours bored in the trenches wished away. “Two” seemed so appealing yet it had all been about this. “One” this was it “GO, GO, GO!” Lottie Royle |
the zip was undone but I daren’t move to do it up. Under my breath I started to sing, soothing my panicking body, but it only brought tears to my eyes.