Lost in the Middlelands

Private Eugene Crawford was lost. Stumbling over the uneven terrain, he had become separated from his unit during an attack on the German lines. It was a frosty morning, the kind that numbs you to the bones and stings your lungs each time you breath in. Fog mixing with gun powder from the battle had obscured his vison as cloud after cloud rolled on through.

It seemed to him that his comrades took the high road, and he took the low road during the fiercest part of the fighting. Going over the top, he felt was nothing but utter suicide. By the grace of a merciful God somehow he had been spared the carnage that occurred all around him. He watched as those surrounding him were cut down by machine gun fire. There was blood on his trousers and tunic, but the blood did not belong to him. How had managed to walk through a living Hell without sustaining a single scratch. He would not question it at this time as long as he remained the only thing that stood over two feet high on the gray landscape.

As he walked, he said some prayers he had learned back at Sunday School. His memory wasn’t as sharp after the attack, but he did the best he could. His senses were dulled and as cloudy as the battlefield. Unable to take another step, he sat down on a tree that had been uprooted by a shell.

Those soldiers in front of him became ghostly shadows that dissipated in the fog and smoke. He stopped at a crater created by a shell. He could hear the bullets buzzing like angry bees overhead. He needed to stop and gather his wits about. T him. Suddenly there was an eerie silence that surrounded him. When he looked into the crater, he saw an arm floating in the puddle with a tattered sleeve of a British uniform. The unsettling discovery made him vomit.

He stood up, his neck craning in all directions, because he had no idea where the enemy trenches were. He wondered if any of his mates had made it to the barbed wire yet.

As he stood there numbed by the sensation as if walking in a dream, the silence was broken by someone calling out to him. He turned quickly toward where the voice had come from with his rifle in his hands ready for whatever was about to happen.

“Hey there.” He heard someone call out. He squinted, but all he could see was a vague shadow.

“Hold it right there.” He raised his rifle and pointed it dead center at the shadow.

“No, no, I’m on your side.” The shadow raised his hands.

“Identify yourself.” His face twisted in anguish.

“You must be lost.” The shadow chuckled.

“I am.” He felt the hopelessness of his situation nearly crush him. “Do you have any idea where we are.”

“Of course, we are in the Middlelands.” He appeared through the curtain of smoke and fog. His face was gaunt and smeared with dirt. His helmet was cockeyed, but his uniform was the same as his. Private Crawford had been warned of German soldiers donning British uniforms to confuse and capture the enemy. In the darkness it was difficult to distinguish who was who at times.

“What does that mean?” He asked still holding his rifle.

“Oh, I’m surprised they haven’t told you about it.” He chuckled as he took his pipe out of his trouser pocket. Raising it to his lips, he struck a match and puffed on the tobacco packed in it.

“Told me about what?” He raised his eyebrow.

“The Middlelands.” The soldier puffed sending a cloud of smoke free into the dense damp air.

“All I know is we attacked an enemy position and in the middle of all the confusion, I got lost.” He blew the air out of his mouth.

“And you wound up here.” The soldier shook his head as he continued to puff on his pipe. “Actually, it’s all rather fortunate.”

“How so?” Private Crawford asked suspiciously.

“Because in the Middlelands there is no war, no conflict, no soldiers killing each other over nonsense.” He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.

“No war? How did I get here?” Private Crawford wore a question mark for a facial expression.

“How old are you, boy?” He asked propping his leg up on the tree which Private Crawford was sitting on.

“I turned nineteen last month.” He affirmed.

“Nineteen? Really?” He bowed his head to hide his smile.

“I am and I can prove it’s so.” He stuck out his bottom lip.

“You aren’t even shaving yet, lad.” The soldier chuckled, “My guess would be sixteen or seventeen. I know a lot of lads who signed up before the age of eighteen to help out with the strife at home. Are you one of those lads?”

He was right, Eugene signed up on his sixteenth birthday nearly a year ago. In his short time with the army, he had seen enough bloodshed to last the rest of his life. During the last attack, he saw the sergeant get decapitated by a shell as he was blowing his whistle. Running up on the enemy trench, he saw dozens of enemy soldiers fall under the hail of bullets. No matter where he looked there was death.

“You are here for a reason.” The soldier pointed his pipe at Private Crawford. “No one comes to the Middlelands for no reason.”

“So, what’s my reason?” He shook his head, “And what is your name?”

“It is better if I remain anonymous.” He smiled.

“What shall I call you then?” He asked looking at him through the top of his eyes.

“Keeper of Middlelands.” He chuckled.

“That’s a title, not a name.” Private Crawford shook his head smiling. “I have wandered lost into this place. There seems to be no one here but me and you.”

“How right you are.” He nodded and stamped out his pipe letting the hot embers rain down into a mud puddle. “It used to be a forest. Do you see any trees?”

Private Crawford shook his head.

“Artillery does what it takes an army of lumberjacks to do.” He swung his head in a hundred eighty degrees, “This place was called the Ardenne Forest. Among this dismal place lay the bodies of thousands of brave soldiers just like yourself. All of them had dreams. Some of them had families. Most of them left behind people who loved them who shed tears at their funerals.”

He paused for a moment. Private Crawford felt as if he had been punched in the gut.

“Names on a headstone is all that remains of these brave men who gave their lives on this small parcel of land that is now deforested and desolate.” As he spoke, his breath came out as a cloud. “Weapons were used to ensure mass casualties were left behind. Is this what we have come to?”

“Why are you asking me.” Private Crawford felt as though he was being cornered by this strange soul.

“Why don’t you take a walk with me. Nothing will happen to you, I guarantee.” He stood up straight and held out his hand toward a path that lay ahead of them. Private Crawford followed him through the dreary lifeless landscape. As he followed, Crawford noticed the stillness and silence which he had not experienced in a while.

Eugene Crawford was the son of a fisherman from Southampton. He soon found that life on fishing boat was not the life he wished to live. Fishing required hard work and skills he did not have.His father never hid his disappointment with Eugene’s inability to do the hard work with the traps and the nets.When the war came he told his father he wanted to enlist.

“Oh crap, ya too young to be off fighting in this war.” His father scoffed.

“My friends are joining up.” He explained.

“Naw, ain’t gonna have me son fighting in a war we got no business fighting.” His salty blue eyes glared at him and his son’s defiance.

One morning feigning illness, Eugene slipped off into town to talk to a recruiter.

“So, ya wanna join the ranks do ya.” Sergeant Major Weinstock puffed on his Merstham pipe. “I was just a lad in the war in South Africa fighting the Boers. It was dirty business.”

Eugene swallowed hard, “I wish to join.”

“How old are ye?” Weinstock squinted.

“Eighteen.” He answered firmly.

“Can I see proof ya be old enough?”

Eugene had forged his birth certificate. It was an amateur forgery, but the sergeant major did not question it.

“Aye, so ya be.” He coughed. “The storm clouds are forming. Many say we will be at war in the coming months. We need soldiers trained and ready for when war does come.”

“I want to be one of those soldiers.” Eugene answered.

“Good, sign here lad.” He pushed a document in front of Eugene who signed it immediately.

In the coming months he was sent to a camp near London to train as a infantryman for the Thirty-Fourth Rifle Brigade. After training for the war that seemed more and more inevitable, Private Eugene went home, but his father would not let him in the front door. He stood on the front porch of home he grew up in, but his father refused entry.

“I tolja boy that I would not accept you goin’ off to fight the Krauts. You are no son of mine.” He slammed the door in his son’s face as he wiped the tears from his eyes and his haversack at his feet.

“Over this ridge is where our journey ends.” The stranger pointed to a modest rise in the rocky road they had been walking over for the last hour.

“What happens when I get there?” Crawford asked.

“I will turn around and go back to where I came from.” He smiled, “The Middlelands end there.”

“I don’t get it.” He said shaking his head.

“What doncha get, private?” His smile disappeared.

“I have walked this empty place that you call the Middlelands. Where are we going?” Private Crawford was becoming agitated with his guide who was not forthcoming with information.

“Correct. I have guided you through the Middlelands as I promised I would do and once we are over that ridge, my obligation will be done.” He pointed to the ridge for emphasis.

“What is waiting for me once we get over that ridge?”

“I am not quite sure to be honest with you.” He shook his head, “You see, I have never been beyond the Middlelands.”

“But what is it? What are the Middlelands?”

“I thought by now that would be obvious.” He chuckled.

“This place is empty and desolate. I have walked with you through this open land, but I’ve seen nothing.” Private Crawford voice sank until “nothing” which was barely a whisper.

“Private Crawford you are correct. There is nothing. This war has destroyed everything that was once beautiful and noteworthy. This is what the Middlelands are.”

“So, am I to believe that this war reduced this place to nothing?”

“Precisely.” He nodded before shaking his head, “War solves nothing and hence the Middlelands reflect what has been gained through this war. Nothing. Today’s victors become tomorrow’s casualties. That which has been gained will be lost. No one wins.”

Private Crawford looked in every direction. His guide was correct. There was nothing here.

“Come, Private Crawford, you must complete your journey.” He winked and began walking toward the ridge.

“What will happen?” Crawford’s tone was desperate.

“I am not the one who can answer that. I am simple the guide.” He shrugged.

“You do know.” Private Crawford raised his rifle, pointing it at the guide.

“Are you going to shoot me, lad?” He smiled.

“I want an answer.” He growled.

“I told you already, I have no idea. I do not have a need to know.” He shook his head as he removed his pipe from his pocket, “If you pull the trigger, you will be disappointed, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Private Crawford his rage flow down his dirty face.

“Trust me, your weapons are no good in the Middlelands.” He lit his pipe.

Private Crawford was not a killer. He closed his eyes. Visions of his father armed with a knife slitting the belly of some of the fish he had caught and letting the slime run down a drain, blood and guts. He had held the fish like his father had taught him, but the fish would offer one last bit of resistance before his knife would put an end to it. The blood and guts that flowed down the drain made his knees weak. How would he feel if he did the same to another human being?

He had spent some time in the bivouacs before being transferred to the trenches. He tasted some of the French wine and bread with his comrades whose bravado boasted of a quick end to the war, but the quick end never happened. Five months since coming across the channel, he had seen the silence of the dead and the screams of the wounded being brought in. This was not the glory of war he had read about in school.

The first time he went over the top when they blew the whistle, he was shaking like a leaf as the nightmare unfolded in front of his eyes.

Maybe the Middlelands wasn’t such a bad place to be. While lacking color or dimension, there was a sense of peace here. When he got over the ridge, would the nightmare return? He hated not knowing what to expect, but he continued to follow his guide even if moments ago he was willing to pull the trigger on him.

When he hiked over the ridge, he saw a road with several soldiers marching in the same direction in complete silence.

“Well, here you are.” The guide held his arms out as the soldiers passed.

“What is this place?” Private Crawford said aloud.

“You will join these men on their journey.” He saluted Private Crawford.

Private Crawford tapped one of the passing soldiers on the shoulder.

“Where are you all going?” He asked.

“Just follow us.” The soldier answered. “We’ll find out when we get there. C’mon mate just tag along.”

“He has no pulse. He’s not breathing.” One of the medics called out.

“I’m Captain Alston.” The officer was wearing a reverend’s collar. “I’m the company chaplain.”:

“This guy needs a few prayers, reverend. We just lost him.” The medic wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. “Mortal wound to his chest. Not much we could’ve done, I’m afraid.”

“What’s his name?” Captain Alston asked.

“Lemme see, sir.” The medic checked the tags the soldier was wearing. “It says Private Eugene Crawford.”

Chaplain Alston began to say prayers as he knelt over the dead soldier’s litter.