002. Men Of No Consequence

Archie stood wearily in the forward trench alongside Nick, the only other remaining member of his group.  Ordnance detonated somewhere overhead, neither man bothered to take cover anymore.  So unlike his first day in this horror.  Back then he would flinch and cower at every boom.  The sheer frequency of the explosions, the dreadful sight of the mangled corpses, the constant risk of joining them, all served as some macabre inoculation against the fear.

 

It wasn’t that he hated Nick, he just didn’t care much for him.  It was just a feeling.  It might have had something to do with the age difference, he wasn’t sure.  Whereas Archie was a young man of 23 years, Nick was … older.  Come to think of it he didn’t know exactly how old Nick was, but he was certainly much older.  He had an impalpable darkness about him.  They had little in common, or rather he suspected they would have had little in common if he’d been interested enough to learn much about him.

 

The four long years of this dreadful war, ‘the war to end wars’, had seen the death of his very humanity.  He used to be a caring, compassionate man, now, it’s just kill and try to keep yourself alive.  He was cold inside, no more than a flesh and bone robot.  Numb, automatic.

 

He spotted two enemy figures bobbing out from a dugout, running towards a bunker, the very bunker his group had, so far unsuccessfully, been tasked with eliminating.

 

He raised his rifle, peered down the sight, one crack took the hindmost.

 

Reload... aim … “Hey Archie!” Nick nudged his arm knocking him off his target.  The gun fired.  Missed!  Only a glancing wound to the second soldier.  Archie cursed. 

 

“Let that one go, he doesn’t matter in the whole scheme of things does he?” said Nick.  Archie turned and glared.

 

He was suddenly aware of the whistle.  The firing had stopped. 

 

“It’s over my friend, it’s all over”, old Nick whispered into his ear.

 

Archie stared over the battlefield.  He heard his own breath, felt his heartbeat.

 

Across the battlefield the wounded soldier reached his bunker, stumbling into the welcoming arms of his comrades.

 

“You were lucky there, just a graze”.

 

The soldier panted, “I’m OK?”

 

“You’ll live, Corporal Hitler, you’ll live.