Creative Writing: The Western Front

The sun was nowhere to be found the dark clouds combined with ash and smoke blotted out any form of light, destruction was everywhere. Wheat fields were ravaged by fires, and towns were reduced to rubble. The ground that was once dark brown soil was now churned into large masses of mud filled with the stench of death. In the mud trenches and foxholes were dug in which many men inhabited, not by choice but out of pure necessity.

After abandoning the camp we stumbled across the country side and found a house. As we sit by the wall, we think about our fellow soldiers now in heaven. I look up to the sky to see shepherds delight or more like the resemblance of the blood of the abandoned. Why everyone was quiet, I don’t know. There probably just tired from the great determination. Many of us seeking an end but will be disappointed and become depressed. Trepidation of death has occurred in several of us.

After the battle of Somme, I was alone. All the men I had signed up with were gone. There was no time to grieve for them; Our division had to meet up with the others at Vimy Ridge. Immediately, we were handed maps of the Ridge. It was odd. We all had our own map to keep and study and we were explained exactly what to do. We even had to go through a scale model to know the lay of the land. Talk about overkill. It was nerve racking because of our tactic called a Creeping Barrage. After firing shells at the Germans for three weeks straight, we slowly aimed higher and higher while we followed the line of fire slowly. That way, the Germans would not be able to leave the trenches until it was too late. In those days that lead to a victory, Canada

Hi Mom! Hope you're doing well. I'm sorry that I haven't been writing to you in a while, things have just been pretty hectic here. None of us have been getting any sleep around here because we are all stuck in these trenches and are always on guard. Every morning, we'd get up and look around. We always have to stay in the trenches unless our "leader" yelled "Over the top", which means the call to attack.

He saddened every time he thought of his mother and couldn’t bear the consequences of leaving her behind. Luckily, Friederick was always there for him, comforting him along the way.

Jimin wakes up to the sound of explosions and fire. A thousand and some men meet their demise each day, and Jimin prays at night he’s not one of them. The war rages around him, and he gets off the make-shift bed to get changed into his gear to help out. He caps the patterned helmet and looks at himself in the mirror. His reflection stares back, sad and weary, a youth gone wrong. He smears camouflage onto his face, high on his cheekbones until there is nothing left of him but an empty vessel of war.

Then he cursed as though he learned it from a manual for sergeants, and his curses merged with the metal slapping air sound of a prop turbine. Dad heard the Bunge’s voice sputter. It sounded as if he stored his anger deep inside him. In order for him to access it, he had to pump it out, using every muscle in his stomach, back, and neck. Sarge cursed, rocking with the effort until his voice became a high-pitched hum.

Russia was dreary and barren. It looked similar to America, the same yellow-grey hues that had been around for years. They approached a trench, his boots were coated in thick dark mud, making it hard to walk. The bags he carried on his shoulders were weighing him down. Consequently, this made him one of the last men in line. Suddenly, they found the muggy grimy trench, already there was a unit in the trench, they had been there two days before us. The men were cold, drenched and exhausted. Their eyes were soulless and their bodies looked disheveled. Two days and this is how they looked. Christopher’s unit climbed down into the rain filled trench, its murky waters seeping into their boots, fog stretched across the sky as they walked among the

I heard it. Beneath the ground, behind the walls I heard it. Echoing screams of sorrow, visions of the dead, a wildfire of disease, a contagious Earth. The scattered debris of humanity’s tallest skyscrapers crumbled in heaps of stone. The splintered glass of humanity’s greatest architectural feats laid scattered in on the roads. The canvas of humanity’s greatest artworks scraped beyond recognition and laid defeated. This was our future. Nothing could’ve prevented it.

On August 21, 2015, a suspected terrorist walked shirtless out of a bathroom on a train traveling to France. He was carrying an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter, and lots of ammunition and he quickly began firing at the people on the train, wounding several. The incident soon had the look of a horrible mass shooting in which there would be dozens of casualties, but then, three American friends and a British man attacked the gunman. They tackled him to the ground but the gunman got out a knife and began slashing at the men, wounding one of them. However, the hero’s on the train choked him into unconsciousness. The total time elapsed was less than 90 seconds.

War is unforgiving. He’s seen the bodies scattered around the fields, hastily buried in shallow graves before they begin to fester and rot. He’s seen them shot down before him, bodies hitting the ground and sinking into the mud- whether friend or foe, it matters not. They’ll all die here in the end. All he can do is wait it out, pray to survive until at least this war is over, and return home to a life of suppressing the memories and forgetting the images of men wiped out and dying, forgotten, in these turgid pits of death.

I close the door of the elevator behind my husband. Our eyes join, like they have so many times before, and we are motionless; pausing our lives, only for a second. I hadn’t expected him to go out for recruitment. Although I suppose I should have; he’s far too proud to let others fight for him. That is where we differ. I desire safety, and he would go to any length to prove to me that he will always keep me safe, even at the expense of his own safety. Almost like we’re the perfect match of opposites. In this moment of stillness, he looks so much smaller than I remember. Too small to go to war. I long to make him stay somehow. If only our eyes could speak when our mouths are speechless and taken by premature grief. I go to open the door again,

A dark and smoky gray night fell over the green grass. An old lamp at the end of an overused power cord of a wooden pole was swinging in the wind. It lit up the surroundings of the construction and printed my moving shadow on the wall behind me. In the half-light of dusk, I walked out of the ruins that minimally protected me from the wrath of the RPF and showed my face to a fire-breathing dragon. I walked into a thick and wet mist that linked up with the wind to whisper ghostly oohs in my ears. I was scared and my legs trembled. Under the dim light, I could not see anything. The smoking of the war clouded the roof of the region and the cold breeze spread an odor of blood and brought the moans of dying people. The dense haze covering my vision

I have someone bringing me my stuff. You don't think that I would leave you alone to go nearly halfway across the castle to get ready do you?" He asked. Rennes sighed at the mention of the silk dress. "You know good and well Seraphine I do not 'play' with any of the servants. She tripped, started to fall and I reflexively caught her." He explained for what felt like the millionth time. He knew she was teasing him though, it was one of her little tricks that he allowed her to get away with. That or playing the total innocent and try and choke him to death with flattery. What he failed to say was that there was only one person he wanted to play with. It was one of the very, very few things he kept from her.

Right now I’m in these trenches writing a heart-filled letter for y’all. But these unbearable conditions have been unsettling to me. Everytime I want to get away from the gruesome war, I think about you. The shots of the machine guns, getting exposed to mustard gas, and having to see my fellow soldiers having to deal with trench foot, all makes me feel hopeless of me staying alive. All day and night, we had to be on the lookout. Planes from the sky makes us vulnerable for air attacks. All aside from all of those problems, the one main goal is to one day find my horse Joey. Maybe both of us will somehow meet me once again during or after the war. I’m very sorry to you guys if I don’t make it home alive, but I’m going to make a big promise, never in a day or night, will I forget about you guys.