In the Enemy Trenches

Tranchée allemande de première ligne
François Flameng
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Louis awakened to a hand gripping his shoulder and shaking him.

"Stay awake, lad. Far too easy to slip off and die in this cold."

The Baron's teeth were chattering, he too was as cold as he'd ever been. Louis had a thought, "Why not just slip away? Can death be any worse than this, freezing in the mud of no-man's-land?"

"Something is going on, lad. Can you hear it?"

"I can't hear anything." Louis moaned as he rolled onto his belly.

"That's just it, no machine gun fire, no artillery firing, it's almost as if the war is over. Maybe we're dead and we just don't know it." The Baron's face was turned to the German lines, he was fully alert now.

"If we're dead than we must surely be in Hell." Louis moaned.

The major turned to his men, "Come on boys, keep moving. The first wave has seized a section of Boche trench and we need to reinforce them before the Germans counterattack. Move carefully but quickly!"

The infantrymen carefully picked their way through the debris and detritus of no-man's-land. One of them, a senior corporal, spotted something in a nearby shell hole, "Sir! Two of our boys over here, I think they're alive."

The man nearly jumped out of his skin when one of the bodies he'd spotted rolled towards him and said, "Of course we're still alive, is the war over?"

"Can you still fight?" The major asked the Baron, who was covered in mud and was shaking with the cold.

"Just give us a minute to stretch, we've been lying in the muck since this morning. We're stiff with cold."

The major nodded and shouted over to a sergeant, "Give these men some brandy, Sergeant Loiseul, then follow us forward as fast as you can."

"Yes Sir!"

The Baron and Louis climbed out of the shell hole and each took the proffered flask. The Baron took a long pull, wiped his mouth with the muddy sleeve of his greatcoat, then handed the flask to Louis. The younger man took a swig, then coughed.

"Damn, what is that?"

"Sorry it's not up to your standards, boy. But that's the best eau de vie we can produce with nothing but what we can find on the local farms. I think we made that with crab apples."

Louis coughed again as he returned the flask to its owner. He could already feel the warmth spreading through him. The taste was nasty, but it seemed to do the trick.

"You ready?" The Baron looked with concern at Louis.

"What are you, his mother?" Sergeant Loiseul growled.

"It's his first time, give him a break." The Baron snapped.

Loiseul shook his head, then snapped, "Follow me, or go home, I don't care."

Louis couldn't believe the number of dead leading to the German trenches. He didn't see anyone he recognized, most of the dead looked crumpled up and sad. Nothing like the paintings always showed. It was obvious that some of these men had died in agony. Others had died as they fell. Bundles of rags and torn flesh that used to be human.

When he climbed into the German trench it was worse. Now he was seeing the enemy for the first time. Though their uniforms were different, their look as they lay where they fell was no different than the dead Frenchmen he'd seen in no-man's-land.

The Baron called to him, "Help us knock down this parados, we also need to build up a firing step. Damn trench is facing the wrong way!"

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Louis had no idea what the Baron was talking about, but it seemed to involve knocking down the back lip of the trench and shifting what they could to the side that faced their old lines. Later he learned that the "parados" was there so that when they were on the firing step, their heads weren't silhouetted by the sky behind them, only more dirt and sandbags.

He jumped in to help with a will, many of the sergeants were nervous about the Boche coming back. He asked the Baron about that.

"The Germans always counterattack as fast as they can. They know it will take time to consolidate our gains, so they want to hit us before we can do that. It's one of the things that make those bastards so dangerous."

Louis went back to work, he noticed that most of the mud which had clung to him was now dry and falling away as he wielded a shovel. He also noticed that the rain had stopped, apparently it had stopped some time ago, he just hadn't noticed.

Then he heard a shout from down the line, "Here they come!"

He grabbed his rifle, mimicking the actions of the more experienced soldiers around him. Oddly enough he wasn't scared, he was irked that the Boche were interrupting his work on the trench.

Odd that.