Wars to End All Wars: Alternate Tales from the Trenches

by Elizabeth Moon

“Escape is a fool’s hope anyway,” I say blankly. “The only people who can pilot Wotan are out in the trench. They’ll be dead by now.”

  There’s a long silence before anyone talks again.

  “The Tommie wants to know if we’ve got any cannons on the panzer. He says that he’s never seen the creature take a direct hit before.”

  I shake my head. “Even if we had, there’s nothing to be done. We can’t get to Wotan.”

  “There’s no cannons, but there are explosives,” Lars says. “We could go—”

  “There’s no chance,” I repeat.

  “Isn’t it worth a try?” Weismann says.

  “He’s right, Albrecht,” Lars chimes in. “Even if there’s no hope at all, it’s better than staying here, waiting to be eaten or be killed by our own forces. If we can just make it to Wotan, perhaps we could even turn it around and get out of here.”

  I take a moment to think and smile faintly at the irony. Ever since I met him, I’ve been worried about Lars, worried about his naïvety and fragility. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve tried to keep him near me to protect him, and here he is protecting me. In this moment, he’s ceased to be a young naïve soldier. Before me he now stands as brave a man as I’ve ever served with.

  “All right, you madmen,” I say with a growing smile. “What’s the plan?”

  I can hear the excitement in Lars’ voice as he conveys the proposal in English. “Well, if we make it to the panzer, it will hopefully be in enough of a position to drive ahead. I watched the pilots and it seemed pretty straightforward. Once we’re underground, we should be able to turn around. We just need to make sure we read the compass and head east for a good long while before we emerge.”

  “Great,” Weismann says. His tone is distant, a culmination of the harsh reality of the war, coupled with the loss of friends. I know he’s lost more than that. He’s lost a part of himself that will never return. It’s the first true casualty of everyone’s own private war.

  Once we’re out of the doorway, we spread out along the ruined trench, trying to avoid the horrible devastation of a shell detonating in the middle of us all.

  I make sure my rifle’s loaded, just as much to cover the Tommie as it is to protect against the worm.

  As we make our way down the trench, I glance at the night clouds lighting up with reflections of shellfire. Soon enough, we reach the Vickers gun. It’s bolstered on its pedestal, facing the British lines, but lays abandoned and alone.

  In the flashes of artillery, I see the churned earth nearby, decorated with the solitary arm of a soldier protruding from the ground. I say a prayer for Hauser and Stardt as I haul myself up the sandbag wall, following the others into the fire and chaos of no man’s land.

  We run through the undulating wasteland as bombs detonate near and far. We run past the remains of British, felled by their own machine gun, and defiled by the bombardment.

  The zip of a bullet skims my head. I daren’t slow down now. A second bullet saws through the air, this time finding the soft flesh of my shoulder. I’m spun around by the bullet’s force and I land on my back in the mud. I expect my shoulder to be in agony, but all I feel is a soft ache, as if it’s nothing more than a bruise, but as I remove my hand, it comes away dark and wet.

  I hear the shouts of the British ahead of us. I try to focus, and appraise what’s before me.

  A blazing white flare fires into the sky, and I can see Lars fighting with the British by the panzer’s hatch. Weismann lies dead just a few feet away.

  I run my hand over the wet mud, trying to retrieve my rifle, but feel only the soft, silent vibration of the earth. I try to swallow but my mouth is painfully dry. I ignore the throbbing in my shoulder, and grab for my rifle.

  Muck spatters onto my cheek as a bullet impacts an inch from my face. I see a single remaining Tommie, charging towards me now as the flare dims, and the rumble gets stronger.

  I aim wildly at the enemy, firing with all my hope. To my amazement, the shot hits his leg and he falls to his knee. I cock the bolt as the Tommie picks up his gun from the floor, and I fire again. Click.

  He raises his rifle as I frantically cock the bolt again.

  Click.

  The ground starts to tremble.

  “Nein, not like this!” I plead, wrestling with the gun. I give up hope and throw the gun away, looking towards the Tommie to face my fate. He aims at me, and in the next second disappears beneath the earth, his flailing arms the last I see of him.

  As his screams fade, a rumbling trail of bulging dirt approaches me.

  I scream in terror. My webbing straps are grabbed forcefully, and I’m dragged back almost to my feet, hauled backwards towards the panzer.

  I strain my neck around to see George struggling to drag me with him.

  Wotan’s huge engine roars and I clamber to my feet against its hatch as the Englishman clumsily hauls me inside. The barrel tilts awkwardly as the worm erupts from the mud and smashes against it, the mouth of the creature expanding to draw in what sustenance it can.

  In a desperate bid, Lars lunges forward, dropping a sparking block of explosive into the cavernous mouth. The creature’s mighty jaws clamp down on his arm as it struggles to penetrate deeper into the panzer, and I hear the sickening tear of flesh and cloth as his arm is detached from his body. He falls to the floor, revealing enough space for George to slam the hatch shut.

  A second later, our world shakes as the explosive detonates within the worm.

  “Lars! Lars!” I scream, pulling myself over to his prone body.

  It’s bad.

  George rushes over and helps me as we yank the sleeve off my shirt and use my bayonet to tear it into strips.

  I tie the strips of cloth around Lars’ severed limb and frantically tell the Englishman that we need to get to a hospital.

  I’m crying now, clutching my head.

  George touches my shoulder and draws my attention. I try to calm myself as he motions towards Lars. He points to himself, and then in the direction of the British reserve line, making a walking gesture. I understand. They should be safe from the worm now, and Lars won’t make it any other way. I nod.

  The Tommie smiles faintly and picks up Lars’ unconscious body as I unlock the hatch. The smell of rot and burnt fuse still lingers on the air.

  I take a moment to look one final time upon my good friend, and the fellow soldier who saved my life, then, I help them out of the hatch into the raging bombardment of no man’s land.

  He salutes me, and I him, closing the hatch as they stumble away.

  As Wotan burrows beneath the earth once more, I appraise the brief glimpse I’ve had of the kindred spirit in khaki uniform.

  Indeed, beneath the uniform we’re all the same, bleeding scarlet and standing terrified in our holes dug in the mud. And it’s there where perhaps we’ve found some common ground, even if it is in fighting ones not such as ourselves. For all their perceived faults, at least the British and I dare say the French have a moral stature. At least they’re not carnivorous monsters dwelling in abyssal burrows beneath the earth, waiting to feast on the remains of man. I think to the looks of disbelief and scorn of my superiors when I return, and think about what those of the Tommie’s will say to him. I wonder, despite the terrible problems we’ve overcome together, if that soldier and I will live to fight another day, perhaps even to meet on the field of battle again, and take each other’s lives in this mad, senseless struggle over a few yards of dirt.

  * * *

  Inspired by: trench warfare

  Lee Swift

  Lee Swift loves to write short stories. He has contributed to a few anthologies now, mainly as part of The Monday Knights (a band of intrepid writers from the wild lands of South Yorkshire, England where he lives).

  He has two daughters, and writes in the small hours before the dawn’s light breaks the horizon, bringing the fair people of the land amazing tales of dread, fear, humor and sometimes zombies. He successfully completed t
hree National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenges this way, and is currently editing his first full length novel.

  Jawohl

  * * *

  Wilson Geiger

  There is a grace about the slim woman before me, even though I have trouble placing her. Her name sits on my tongue, but slips away before I can utter it, before I can make her real. Her face is beautiful, high cheekbones and a delicate chin. Her lips are red and full, and she mouths something, a faint whisper, so faint that I cannot make out what she says. Jet black hair curls over her shoulders, and I want nothing more than to run my fingers through those curls.

  Still, it is her eyes that truly captivate me. A striking blue, like the clear skies overhead, they peer into mine, and I read the sadness within that gaze easily. I know that she is sad for me, for us, and the worry radiating from her etches into my skin, into my core.

  A part of me wants to reassure her somehow, to tell her that I will be fine. That everything will be just fine.

  I open my lips to tell her that, and the skies dim before I can say a word. Her eyes widen, and then she changes before me. Her skin goes slack, her face darkens, and the world transforms with her. She hangs over the ledge of a narrow trench, clinging to the ledge with dirty elbows. A streak of blood runs from her forehead, drips off of her nose. And then I realize it is no longer her at all, but another familiar face. A man that I recognize, but again the name flits from my memory as I struggle to remember. His green eyes go wide at the sight of me.

  I cringe at the rattle of gunfire, the overpowering thump of artillery, the screams, the shrieks of piercing agony.

  An odor hits me then, sharp and sweet, combined with the clogging smells of thick smoke and heated metal. I look at my feet, at the churned up earth surrounding me. I stand in a puddle of a congealed substance, red and thick, and right away I realize that it is blood. The sweetness of it cloys at my nostrils, and I suppress a gag.

  The blood oozes down a crease in the earth, and steadily streams into the trench. I peer over the edge, and torn bodies litter the ground, like some monster chewed up pieces of flesh and spat out the rest. Men, strangers, friends, dumped into the pit, their vacant eyes staring into some abyss I fear I’ll never see. A tide of crimson pools near the bodies, rises over stray rifles and boxes of ammunition. A single helmet sits propped against the bayonet of a rifle, the Pickelhaube helmet’s spike dipping into the pooled blood.

  My attention shifts to the man, still hanging on for dear life. Dark soot sticks to his blond hair, streaks one side of his face. He reaches for me, but all I can do is stare at his outstretched hand. His mouth opens, a chasm of panic, but I hear no sound.

  His terror washes over me, latches onto my thundering heart.

  Blood, caked on torn stone and ripped metal, spatters against the churned ground. The trickle grows to a heavy stream, and the red washes over everything, threatens to overtake the man in the trench. It flows over my feet, and I feel it licking at my knees. I scream, a gurgled cry, but there is too much. So much blood that I choke on it, and my gasping, panicked breaths pull me back into the fevered cloud of reality.

  I wake, the room a haze of shadowed grays and blacks that slowly come into focus as I stumble towards the light switch. Flicking the power on, I cringe and blink against the stark illumination of the radial bulbs that line the ceiling. A moment passes and then the lights dim to a suitable brightness, accommodating my perceived comfort level. What there is of it.

  The nightmare clouds my mind, like a constant wakefulness, where I relive the horrors of the war, the pitched battles over barren patches of earth. An eternal torment, when all I want is the peaceful darkness of sleep. A bliss that I cannot recall.

  The world after the Great War has stripped any remembrance of peace from me, taking my soul and leaving the hollow shell of my body behind.

  The room is spartan. The walls are bare, save for a square vent on the floorboards, and a rounded speaker about head height. The grill cover of the speaker lay on the floor, forgotten, cobwebs stretching from the plastic to the wall. The thin wallpaper, a dull, faded yellow, is chipped and worn, spots peeling back in the upper corners near the pocked ceiling.

  Mirrors are unnecessary. I am fully aware of the reflection I would see, the haunted face, the sunken eyes. The look of the dead on the living. A man marked by Verdun and a thousand trenches. Haunted by countless dead.

  A tall, narrow refrigeration unit stands in the far corner, the tiled floor underneath damp from a small condensation leak. A wide door marks the exit on the other side of the room, the handle connected to long iron rods that lock the door in place.

  I am not hungry, any appetite fading with the remnants of my nightly terror. I have not eaten in what feels like days, and I briefly wonder if perhaps I am beyond starvation. But I am too tired to care, even if I am.

  “Hauptmann Werner.”

  The name catches my attention, and a wry humor settles over me. My rank. My name. How long until I forget that, as well?

  My gaze swivels towards the voice, emitted by the speaker mounted to the wall. “Hauptmann Werner, present,” I say, the rigorous training and etiquette of years past still evident in my sharp reply.

  “Second level, Hauptmann Werner. Fortification maintenance.”

  The wry humor vanishes, replaced with numb resignation. Duty calls, as always. “Jawohl. I am coming.”

  I step towards the door and pull the levered handle. The rods squeal as they are jerked free from their grooves, and the door groans open. The hall is as bland as the room, a drab gray that stretches several doors down until it ends with the steel, reinforced double doors of the elevator. Light strips line the ceiling at regular intervals, one of the lights down the hall flickering.

  Pulling the door closed behind me, I take steady strides towards the elevator, the room numbers stenciled on the doors catching in my peripheral vision as I pass by. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. The doors are caked in dust, rust settling against the bottom, lining the frames. All empty, save mine.

  I scan my memory, but I cannot remember the last time I saw anyone on this level.

  Hidden gears whine as the elevator doors pitch open, and I step into the shadow within. The doors shut, and I palm the button for the second level. The elevator shakes for a moment, and then I feel the jerk of momentum as the lift engages.

  The work is hard, as it always is. No days off, no breaks. No time to be sick, no vacation. Just the hard labor of rebuilding after the armistice, placing brick on top of brick, reinforcing broken walls and failing infrastructure.

  My commander, Oberst von Klaus, says that one day we will strike back, from this very base, but I am not convinced. There is so much work to be done, and so few of us left to do what is needed. I rarely see others where I am tasked to work, and those I do see are occupied with their own roles, so I am largely left on my own.

  And my fighting days are well in the past now. That urge fled long ago, I think, although I do not mention that to the Oberst.

  My day is spent entirely on the second level, mounting steel plates on the buttresses of the outer wall and repairing cracks in the stone. Enormous 105mm guns are shifted back on their carriages as I work, and I feel a slight tremor in my core at the sight of such monstrosities. I can almost hear the pitched whine of falling shells, the thunder of impact. The smell of acrid gas hits me.

  I am glad when the work is done, and I can retire to my room. In my room I can forget, if only for a moment.

  The elevator screeches to a jarring halt on home level, and I step into the corridor leading to my quarters. One of the light strips is still flickering, a constant reminder of how fragile things can be, even within a fortress such as this. Maintenance, reinforcement, the work required to hold up that which gravity would bring down to earth, is never ending.

  Walking towards my room, number twelve, my eyes roam from the light strip to the doors, and I pause.

  One
of the other doors, the stenciled seventeen scratched and faded, is open slightly, a narrow line of illumination falling across the hall’s concrete floor. My footsteps slow as I approach, and my gaze catches a flash of blond hair and surprised eyes before the door is slammed shut.

  Thoughts churn in my mind as I continue to my room. Those eyes, that hair, somehow they look familiar to me. A memory stirs, but flits from my mind as I struggle to remember. I know them, know that face from somewhere, I know it. I push my door open, and then slam the door in frustration.

  I should eat, but again I feel no sense of hunger, no urge. I know, now, that there is something wrong with me. Instead I skip the refrigeration unit and turn towards the speaker centered on the wall. My mind wanders, and I search for that face. I know it is in there somewhere, hidden, fleeting, as if the memory itself will only live if I cannot find it.

  A beep emits from the speaker, followed by the monotone voice. “Sleep, Hauptmann Werner.”

  I hold off sleep as long as I can, but the lights are switched off and I have no choice as I fade into a brief darkness.

  Leutnant Gerheld calls my name, and then I see his face, his shocked eyes framed by wisps of greenish-colored gas. Bodies litter the trench, and others, still clinging to life, clamber for safety as the cloud rolls over them. A safety that doesn’t exist.

  Gerheld’s eyes lock onto mine. His eyes are green, not unlike the poisonous gas that drifts past, and the terror within his gaze is easy to read. His hand lifts from the dirt wall of the trench, fingers extended, reaching out to me. A lock of blond hair falls over one of his eyes.

  “Heinrich! Help me, please!”

  My own fear takes hold, roots me to the spot, and then I hear the keening cry of an artillery shell. A whistle sounds down the trench, followed by cries to take cover. I stare at Gerheld for a moment, and my lips tremble as I realize what I must do. I mutter an apology, then mouth a prayer.

  Gerheld, my friend, he knows it, too. His eyes tell me of my betrayal.