Passchendaele

I lie in the mud,
Shells burst,
Guns fire,
Planes fly overhead.

I am looking across a puddle, a mix of mud and blood, at a corpse.

I think it's a corpse.

It has no head, one arm is gone, the other hanging limply by the tattered remains of a uniform.

A gray uniform.

A German uniform.

No, it is more than that, and less. It is not gray, not german,

It is an Enemy uniform.

I look at a leg, ending below the knee in a bloody, mangled stump.

My leg,

Or what's left.

I can hear the Enemy charge. I turn over in the mud, reach through the mud, find my rifle in the mud, wipe off the mud, clear the mud from my eyes, lie in the mud, and take aim at men running across the mud.

Enemy men running across the mud.

Not even men, just Enemy.

You need to think that way, not as a man killing a man,
But a Soldier killing an Enemy.

I prop myself up on a corpse. I look at the face.

He gave me a cracker yesterday, in exchange for a song on my harmonica.

I plant my elbow in the gap between his collarbones, resting it on his jaw and chest.

My other elbow is embedded in his stomach, or rather, the hole where his stomach used to be.

You can't think like a man.

You can't think.

You'll go crazy.

Maybe you will anyways.

I pull the bolt back on my rifle, my hand slipping on the mud. It's everywhere.

I aim at an Enemy, and fire. A Soldier kills an Enemy, but I am not he.

I pull the bolt again, and then the trigger.

More Enemy fall.

I see a shot.

I see the shot before I hear it, and I hear it before I feel it.

I see it in my eyes, hear it in my ears, and feel it in my right shoulder.

I need that shoulders to shoot.

I pull the handgun off of the corpse I am lying on. I fire.

The Enemy continues.

They come too close, and I know I must stand.

My tattered stump drags in the mud, and I try to balance on one knee.

The Enemy is close.

Too close.

I am too late.

An Enemy stabs me, his bayonet sliding between my ribs on the right side. He hit a lung, and I know I will die.

It will not be fast.

The charge made the Enemy energized.

Adrenaline does that.

He picks me up, on his bayonet, and drives me back into the mud blood puddle.

Next to the Enemy.

The bayonet leaves me, and I am left.

There.

I slowly drown in the puddle, inhaling mud as I do.

The nerve gas makes it acidic.

The mud burns my lungs, my wounds, my stump, my skin, my mouth, my throat.

My eyes.

I can't close them.

I slowly drown, while I am dissolving in and acidic mud blood puddle.

In a puddle, there is a Gray uniform.

A German uniform.

An Enemy uniform.

And, A Green uniform.

A Canadian uniform.

A Soldier's uniform.

Sometimes a man kills a man, sometimes a Soldier kills an Enemy.

Sometimes an Enemy kills a Soldier.