No Man's Land

No Man's Land

By evolution-500

Genre: Drama/Supernatural

Disclaimer: Wonder Woman is a character and property owned by DC Comics. I do not own this character.

WARNING: This story contains references to violence, coarse language, disturbing themes and imagery. Reader discretion is advised.

"In valor there is hope."

- Tacitus

I will never forget the first time I saw her.

It was on November fourth in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and eighteen, when I saw a miracle.

At the time, I was a young Private for the British Army, a boy barely older than nine and ten, and it was in the trenches of No Man's Land where I had been given my first taste of war.

I had joined on account of my father and his father before him, both proud veterans who had served King and Country on the frontlines.

As a young man that came from a strong military tradition, it was expected of me to follow the example of my forefathers, so when the call came for me to perform my duty, I had been all-too happy to oblige.

I do not regret my service to his Majesty, but looking back on it now, in many ways, I can only shake my head at the naïve fool that I had once been, and had I been given the foresight of what I know now, my courage and willingness would most assuredly have waned.

I came into the war thinking that it would be a path to honor and glory.

When I found myself on the frontlines, all that I beheld was horror.

No amount of preparation in the world could have prepared me for what lied ahead.

When my unit and I had arrived at No Man's Land all those many years ago, it had been the smell in the air that I noticed immediately.

It had been an awful smell, a horrible combination of a seeming endless array of odors that coalesced into a pungently lethal cocktail that had been nauseating, so foul that even when we tried not to inhale through our nostrils that we were able to practically taste it.

It was a smell like gunpowder, cigarette smoke, burning wood and rotting meat mixed with stinking mud, lingering gas, wet clothes, unwashed bodies and wet feces all combined together to produce an overpowering stench.

Christ almighty, I remember how every time my unit and I drew nearer to the front, the more overwhelming the smell became, so much so that every man there was trying not to throw up. I will admit that I was among those unable to keep their food down at the time.

The main latrines used to be located behind the lines, but soldiers in the frontline, I had later discovered, had to dig small waste pits in their own trenches in order to do their business, resulting in the air perpetually smelling of shit.

I don't know what ill-preconceived notions of a battlefield I had at the time, but I vividly remember what I saw.

To say that it was horrible was putting it mildly; nothing could have prepared me for the awful truth of what war actually was.

The first time that I gazed upon the atrocity known as "No Man's Land", I had been completely unprepared for the sheer sensory bombardment that followed.

I saw a sky that was perpetually dark and grey, often filled with smoke.

I saw a long, narrow, smoky and muddy desolate stretch of land with numerous blasted trees, some barely little more than stumps, while the rest of the area was stripped clean. The land itself looked flattened, battered, and scorched, with numerous flooded craters of varying sizes caused by the constant shelling.