Writing out of my experience

 

I have always been a pacifist and if I had ever been in the position of fighting in a war, I would have been a conscientious objector and, gone to prison. Writing out of my experience I deduced would therefore be writing from the opposite perspective.

I remember in 19405/6 I asked my mother why there was a house in the Cresent with hedges so high and thick that one couldn't see the house or into the garden. The reply was that the people who lived there were conchies. She then explained what a conscientious objector was. 

March 1915 somewhere on the Western Front

The mud is deep and thick. It is also frozen. The temperature has been below freezing for days. The men are dying like flies, not only from bullets or bombs or grenades but from flu. Spanish flu. They have no idea why it is called Spanish flu. German flu would have made more sense. All night long explosions are loud, and the night sky is occasionally lit up like fireworks but the two squaddies sharing a cigarette know otherwise.

"I can't stand this," says Tom.

"What choice have you got mate. It's not like you can hail a taxi and ----"

"Don't be daft man. I have heard of some blokes shooting themselves in the foot. They get sent home."

His mate Jack says, “I suppose that’s one way out. I am too much of a coward to do that.”

Tom asks, “What brought you here anyway?”

“Me Dad I suppose. And the neighbours. And the newspapers. And the bloody posters. I couldn’t sleep. All I could hear was, "coward, coward, coward”. So 'ere I am. In the trenches. O' course, I’m frightened as well. I am terrified. I write home as often as possible because I am here to make my father proud of me. He told me that if I didn’t sign up, he would disown me. I love me Dad and didn’t want him to be ashamed of me. He and me mother took me to the station (me mother was crying o' course). They wanted to give me a family send off. He actually shook my hand. “

“I wonder if he would be proud of you if you could see you now, soaked to the skin, freezing cold, dying of hunger and shivering from fear.”

“Well, that’s the last of the ciggies. And there’s no food left. “

“What the bloody hell is that.”

“ShShSh. Don’t move. Someone is creeping along the trench. I can just see his helmet. It’s a bloody Gerry.”

“I can’t kill another man, Gerry or no Gerry.”

“You must. If we don’t kill him, he'll kill us.”

The German faced them and pointed his rifle.

The squaddies faced the German and aimed their rifles at him.

Just then a grenade exploded in the trench at the same time as the two squaddies and the German fired their guns.

Jack’s mother opened the door to receive the telegram.

“Well, are you satisfied now,” she said to his father, “Are you proud? Here you read it.”

Of course, it said,” KILLED IN ACTION”.