Invisible Frontline by Thomas Wood

Author:Thomas Wood [Wood, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BoleynBennett Publishing
Published: 2019-02-28T23:00:00+00:00

11

“Is everyone ready?”

No.

My immediate response to the Captain’s question was not one that would be deemed unusual, and if I was to look Captain Arnold in the eye, then I was fairly certain his answer would be exactly the same.

What we were preparing to do went against everything in innate human nature, against everything that I had ever been taught how to do. Instead of running away from danger, I was about to go in search of even more of it.

I had been raiding for many months now and had consequently become accustomed to the fear of scraping my stomach over No Man’s Land, ignoring the bodies and decaying remnants of human flesh that lay about out there. But the idea of going further into the German lines was a notion that I was so petrified of, that I didn’t know how to control myself.

A blinding headache had stretched across my head, reaching from ear to ear, and the quiver in my hand had returned the minute I realised that I was not actually dreaming. This was actually about to happen.

The distant rumbles of far away artillery carried on somewhere in the distance and I found myself longing to be underneath those shells. If I was there, I would be able to find some sort of cover, I would be able to get under the ground and wait until the storm had settled.

But, being here, I had no choice but to carry on further, especially as I was convinced that the Captain would shoot anyone who refused to go with him.

I locked eyes with Bob for a moment and, for a second, we shared a time that was reminiscent of days gone by. The days when I had relied on him for courage, instead of the hip flask. In a time when I was nervous about every far-off rumble, or distant sniper’s crack.

I needed him now. He had always been my friend, he had always been fighting alongside me. The only reason why he had pulled me up on the things that he had done was for my own good. It was to keep me alive. Maybe I had misjudged him.

There was something inside my gut though, that continued to tell me that he needed to be transferred away from the rest of us. Maybe it wasn’t for the good of the team like I had reasoned before. Maybe it was for his own good. I wanted him to live.

And this job continually kept asking us to die.

“Ready?” repeated the Captain impatiently, as he locked eyes with me as if I had let him down in some way. He expected a sense of fear in all of them, of cowardice maybe, but from me, he wanted nothing but bravery and determination. It was something that I was unsure I would be able to give him.

It had been the late Sergeant, the one who used to wear the very same stripes that I now wore on my jacket, that had told me something that sprang into my head as we stood there.

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