The Night Raid

Private Willie Smaull pressed himself against the dirt wall of the trench. That shelter, combined with his helmet, meant that he was only mostly soaked by the downpour, the third this week, that made his and almost every other man here’s life miserable.

That didn’t go for the Captain, who was peering through the periscope to the German lines yonder. Willie had been in this trench four times since getting to France, and not once had he laid eyes on no man’s land, much less the enemy fortifications, or even a Boche. A one armed Frenchie had told him their word for the Germans, which sounded a lot more sophisticated than Hun. The Frenchie said it with equal parts fear and awe, his voice carrying the grandeur and his eyes the horror.

There wasn’t much sophistication in the trenches. A fat rat crept along the wooden board across from him. It pointed its snout at Willie, and squeaked. Willie threw his empty tin at it, missing the vermin by a hair. The rat decided to not react, trotting off like it hadn’t a care in the world. It probably didn’t.

“Sergeant, there, that notch, that is going to be your target,” the Captain didn’t relinquish the scope, nor did he describe it further. Sergeant Lionel Crown, just nodded, as though the Captain could see him through the back of his head.

“Of course sir. Now will you be leading this raid, or am I going to be doing it?” Crown scratched his chin, his eyes not caring one way or another.

The Captain stretched his neck sideways, keeping his eyes in the scope, “No, Lieutenant Hawkins will.”

“Hawkins is dead.”

The rain pattered off the metal of his helmets, covering up the sound of Crown spitting into the already wet trench.

“Lieutenant Moore then.”

“Dead.”

The Captain stepped down and turned to face Crown. “Lieutenant Jenkins.”

“Could still be alive. But he is out there,” Crown pointed out to no man’s land, “Never came back from the last raid.”

The Captain looked worried. There was only one more officer left beneath him that he hadn’t named. “Vickers?”

“In hospital. Could be dead. Got stabbed by a hooker back in Paris.”

The Captain adjusted his helmet. “I guess you get the honors then Sergeant Crown. Take second platoon, they are fresh.”

Shit. Willie felt his bowels loosen. Maybe he needed to finish that letter to Claire back home. Might not get another chance.

***

Crown was a veteran of many wars. Nicaragua, Honduras, the Philippines, China, Haiti and Cuba all provided scars and stories. To Willie, it meant listen to Crown if he wanted to live. So when Crown’s gravely voice started to rumble as he stood in front of the 2nd Platoon before they would go over the top, he was all ears.

“Men, I know that none of you have been on a night raid before. I’m gonna say this once and only once. Clear everything out of your mind. I know that you got mail before chow. Forget about your girl back home, forget about the farm, forget about your parents and your family. Distraction will get you killed. Darkness is your friend. When you hear the flare, hit the dirt.”

The men around Willie all nodded. With each word, Willie’s guts protested.

“The point is intelligence, gentlemen. Prisoners, paperwork, and no poppycock. I understand you may have to shoot some Huns, but we need some alive too. Besides your rifle, remove any metal. It can reflect light, which then makes you a target. Move with speed and stealth. I will be with you.”

His fellow soldiers removed their helmets, their belt buckles and their knapsacks. Willie patted the letter in breast pocket. From Claire. He pulled his cross out from under his shirt, and kissed it.

“One last thing, gentlemen. If you were wondering, that smell is rotting corpses. Don’t get in the bigger shell holes. You might think they are cover, but if you fall down one, the water at the bottom is full of bodies, and it deeper than it looks. There are a lot of ghosts out there, don’t let them get you killed. Good luck, and godspeed.”

Willie climbed up to the parapet. The rain had ended, but thankfully the clouds stayed. His heart pounded in his chest, smashing against his ribs. He clutched his rifle in one hand, the ladder in his other, and desperately tried to clear his mind. He pressed his face against the mud wall of the trench, trying to forget whatever possessed him to enlist in the Army.

He felt a nudge against his shoulder, the man behind him pushing him. Crown must have given the signal. Willie was surprised that his feet did indeed move, and he climbed the ladder. He slithered over the top, and drug himself along the ground in front of the trench. Others were already moving barbed wire so they could enter the bombed out middle proper.

In another feat of bravery, Willie got up to a crouch, and started to walk towards the German lines. In the darkness, he could see other brave souls doing the same. He couldn’t see much else, but the ground wasn’t mud completely.

A sharp hiss stopped his heart, as a flare shot into the sky. Willie dropped to the ground, hugging his new best friend with every ounce of strength. His nostrils filled with wholesome smells, and then he was back, for just an instant, in that field he and Claire shared a memorable July afternoon in 1917. Her smiling face in his mind’s eye started to read the letter in his pocket out loud, and he couldn’t stop it.

My dearest Willie,

I hope my correspondence finds you well. Maggie had a fresh litter of pups this last spring, and they already are so big. My parents are well, as are yours. Your brother asks me if I have heard from you each time I see him. He is so excited to enlist and kick the Hun out of France next year. I know your father worries about him, but he won’t stand in the way of him doing his duty. Perhaps you can win the war before he enlists.

I miss you so much, I want you to know that. You have been gone for so long, and even though you have sent letters, it isn’t enough. Daniel Pettigrew has asked after you, saying that it is good you joined the infantry. His brother joined the flyers, and the last reel I saw at the theater truly showed him on his flying machine. What a gallant figure!

It is so hard to write this, but you deserve to know. Daniel and I are getting married. I gave your ring back to your father. Daniel is going to inherit a large ranch, and he bought me the nicest dress in Mrs. Winslow’s shop two weeks ago. I just know he will give me the life I want.

Let us remain friends Willie. Don’t be cross with me. What we had was puppy love. Nothing more. Come back from over there, and we can read Keats by the oak tree once again.

Claire

Willie looked up, the flare had burned out. No shots fired, no artillery raining down. Of their own accord, his feet got beneath him, and he started walking towards the Germans. He felt wetness on his face, but no rain fell on him.

He stepped over two dead men laying on the ground, an obese rat squeezing itself out from under one of them as he passed. Its face reminded him of Daniel, who once he called a friend. Willie pictured them hand in hand, strolling through the same field that Willie found himself in, gracefully waltzing around the piled up dead.

Deep inside he felt anger build, but his own survival keep it suppressed. Willie spotted John Maxwell propped up against a post, and he slid in next to John, and removed his wire cutters.

“Seen any of them John? The Boche?” whispered Willie.

“No, but they are just over yonder. You can smell their tobacco. Turkish.” John mumbled as though his tongue was swollen.

Willie could. Now it wasn’t a fine Carolina plant, but the Turks knew their business. “Thanks for pointing it out, but get your cutters out. We need to get through the wire. Help me.”

John remained seated, and Willie cursed under his breath. “Get up you lazy sunofabitch.” Willie looked over at John.

A neat red hole was in the middle of his forehead. Willie could see that a spongy lump lay on the ground next to John. It clicked then that John was a member of 3rd Platoon and wouldn’t have been out here on this raid. In fact, they went over the top last week. He was still twisted up in the barbed wire, and now Willie could smell him. A mixture of stale defecation, iron, and rot.

He started to cough, and Willie covered his mouth for nothing else than to keep the noise down. He swallowed, and resumed cutting.

When he cut the last wire, he bent them back to make a bigger opening and crawled on through. He reached the very end of the ground before the trench, and lay as flat as he could, breathing deeply.

He could hear others behind him, quiet clicks breaking the silence as they breached the wire. Willie breathed in his nose deeply, almost ready. The wind whispered in his ear, “Go”, and he slid into the trench. It was empty.

Willie waited for his heart to stop pounding, and then he picked a direction. He advanced at a crouch, and kept his eyes darting from shadow to shadow. There was almost no light. Then he heard voices, in German, from around a corner, and he froze.

He stood there, and watched Richard Falmer move past him, and turn the corner. But Richard was killed three days ago by in a barrage, his body pulverized and his head landing at Willie’s feet, a look of surprise causing Willie to chuckle uncontrollably for the remainder of that day.

Willie started to move his feet once again, and then an unseen flap of canvas moved, pouring lantern light into the dark trench. A monster stood in the doorway, a metal skull with a snout for a face, carrying a bladed rifle in both hands. It made an ugly screech, and thrust its weapon at Willie.

The bayonet cut the air as the Boche tried to impale him. Willie twisted his body, and it only nicked his shoulder, a small slice of pain. Willie swung his rifle butt around, and struck the Boche in the side of its head. It grunted and collapsed. Two more in the room behind the canvas rose, and leveled their rifles at him.

Willie spun to the side as bullets tore through the doorway. He sucked in air, and said a quick prayer. Out of the darkness Ulysses Hatfield barreled, and dove into the canvas door. Two more shots rang out. He tried to remember if he had died last week, but then he remembered seeing him this morning. He was dead now.

Numbness spread its tentacles through his body. He had met Ulysses at the last football game before Christmas break. He played for the opposing team. But that animosity vanished when they found themselves going through training together.

Willie spotted a canteen laying next to the unconscious Boche. He picked it up, and threw it into the room, and two more shots pierced the night. Willie followed it, and fired his rifle at one of their throats. A spray of blood poured out of him, and Willie tacked the other one.

He saw Daniel’s face in the inhuman visage in his eyes, and that rage buried under the numbness exploded, and Willie turned the Boche over and head butted him.

He sat up, and surveyed the room. Two dead bodies, and two prisoners. Something troubled him though. All of the Germans were wearing gas masks. Why?

He heard Claire’s voice chide him, and Daniel laugh as they dined in the corner covered in the German’s blood. “Silly, because they are going to use gas.”

The hiss of death erupted outside, and shouts of alarm accompanied it. They didn’t bring masks with them. Willie’s nose picked up the smell of pears, and he could feel his stomach drop out his bottom. He grabbed the nearest German, his mask damaged in their struggle, and other a neat hole were Willie shot him. That left the one in the doorway.

Willie dropped his rifle, and in one movement stripped the mask of the unconscious man. It looked like it was in once piece, and he fumbled as he pulled it on. A milky white cloud drifted down the trench heading toward him, muddying the sounds of shots and dying men behind it.

He yanked the gloves off the Boche, and as the cloud of death enveloped him, he pulled them on, covering his exposed flesh. Booms echoed in the trench, explosions happening back with the rest of the 2nd Division in his own earthworks.

He looked down at the Boche’s now uncovered face. For a moment, it looked like Danny Boy, a young man who drowned during basic training. Willie shook his head, and the face now was of just a young man, too young to die. Willie reached into his pocket, and pulled out a letter. A photograph of a young woman, stared back at him with intensity.

I wonder if she was happy with him. She looked like many a girl back home. Maybe she had her own Daniel, and hadn’t yet told her soldier, dying here in his own trench.

Sergeant Graves shook Willie’s shoulder. “It’s time to go. Now!”

Willie followed Graves up and out of the trench, and watched him disappear into a cloud of mustard. Someone pushed him forward, and a gravely voice behind another gas mask growled at him. “What did I tell you about ghosts Private? The dead aren’t here to save you,” Crown grabbed his shoulder, and dragged him through the barbed wire.

Willie stayed on Crown’s heels as they navigated through the bombed out terrain. He could hear bullets punching the dirt around him. A muffled explosion nearby released a large cloud of yellowish mist, a scream behind ended with a wet slap.

In the chaos, he saw Claire and himself, laying on a blanket, Willie holding up grapes that she ate off the vine. A falling body broke apart the mist, and skeletal faces rose from the open grave they ran through. “How far is it Sergeant?” Willie breathlessly asked through his mask.

“It is just over here, just keep runnin…” a whistling sound whizzed past Willie and struck Crown. It spun his body around, his right cheek neatly sliced off as he fell to the ground. Willie dove next to him, and grabbed his hand.

“I’ll get you back Sergeant,” Willie almost believed those words.

A gurgle answered him. Out of the mist, Daniel emerged, wearing his jockey uniform, a grin ear to ear. He knelt down next to Willie and the dying Crown. “You really should have known you never had her. I told her not to tell you, wouldn’t do you any good. Even if you did manage to come back. You were just going to yearn for her, and the life you think you could have had. None of you were going to have those lives.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why not? Its not like you are going to be able to do anything about it. I’m back home, vital to the war effort. You are here, expendable like all the rest. That's really what you should be pining for, thinking that you matter. Not that you have long to do that.”

“I never liked you, Daniel.”

Daniel chuckled. “Yes you did.” He faded into the mustard.

Crown breathed his last, his fingers going limp in Willie’s hand. Daniel had been right. All of this was pointless. And now it was over.

A lone Boche strode out of the mustard. His long bayonet was covered in blood, and Willie looked up, tears soaking the inside of the mask. Damn it.

***

Oskar thrust his rifle into the chest of the American sitting on the ground, and then into the one laying on the ground. Had to be sure. Hopefully this attack would break the resolve of the Americans. Oskar dreamed of getting back to Kaethe once the war ended. He missed her terribly.