Northeastern France, December 1916
9:10 AM
It's a cold Sunday morning. In the trenches, soldiers pass by me. The wind howls as the snow falls. I am seated in a dugout, remembering the Frenchman who died in that ditch.
What's more, I still haven't found Albert. I remember when we enlisted. It was 1915—a sunny day in June. I was merely seventeen years of age. He was sixteen. The German minimum age to enlist was eighteen. We, young lads, thought, "What's a condition to stop us from fighting for the Fatherland?"
We lied about our age. Little did we know, war is a tragic, terrible thing. We were enthusiastic about throwing ourselves into the battlefield. We were oblivious. We had no idea that we would be in dug-in positions that would stay under cannon fire for days. We are constantly tired, for we had no sleep at all on the front. The stench. That lingering odor of rotten flesh.
The dead do not even have proper burials. After attacks, we simply toss them over the parapet. It eventually breaks the mind of anyone on the front. The violence, the death. One can only take so much before they break.
I snap back to reality as someone walked toward me. "Karl Leinemann?" the man asked.
"Yes?"
"I was told to pass this letter."
I take the piece of paper from his hand.
Dear Karl,
If, by any chance you are reading this letter, It most likely means that I have perished on the battlefield. I asked my comrades to hand pass the message. Thank you for being with me and being my brother.
Albert
My heart sinks. I hear the blood inside my head pump as adrenaline courses through me. "What happened to him?" I asked, as I grasped his collar, "Please, tell me what happened!"
YOU ARE READING
It's All Quiet In No Man's Land.
Historical FictionKarl Leinemann, a young German boy, enlists in the German Army in 1915. Fighting on both the Western and Eastern Front is intense. He realizes the horrors of war.
