War At Its Peak

• Rosalind Prater, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2022

Alexander was lamenting his conscription. Leaning a shoulder against the muddy wall of the trench, he stood on one leg, with the other toe resting upon the duck board. His weight was split between the cold, filthy trench wall and his gun, the bayonet sinking further into the duckboard, as he leant on it. His foot was placed slap-bang in the middle of a puddle, the icy, reeking water starting to sink into his boot. It was as though he was tempting the Devil to give him trench-foot, but the Devil declined, knowing that a rotting foot would nicely get him sent to a hospital, and staying on the front was far worse.

Alexander’s angelic blond curls had become dirt-encrusted, partially due to all of his wall-leaning and partially due to the general grime of war. His blue eyes were windows into his thoughtless mind, reflecting his fears when he cowered and his confusion when people yelled or left him. Everything about him was soft, like he was still waiting to hit puberty. His face was undefined, his complexion sickly pale and he was still clinging to a few pounds of puppy fat.

His earnest baby face ensured that all plausible friends avoided him like the plague. He was oblivious to his desperation and everyone, recognizing his loneliness, evaded him further. Alexander, however, didn’t worry about this inescapable truth, so people had to keep making increasingly implausible excuses for why they couldn’t spend time together.

Indulging in self-pity, he thought about home and compared his warm, biscuit-smelling kitchen with the rotting-flesh reeking, grimy, and terrible trenches. At home, he was sure that a girl was about to go out with him, especially since her boyfriend had enlisted at the start of the war. He, Alexander reasoned, was sure to be dead soon, or at least disabled when he returned. All Alexander had to do to win her was wait.

The sound of bullets echoed throughout the air, and Alexander ducked, terrified that the shots would somehow hit him through the trench wall. After a minute of cowering, he marched back to where he was meant to be keeping watch and gingerly peeked over the wall.

It was a horrific sight. The barbed wire was stained a ruddy-brown from rust, mud and people getting all caught up and never escaping. Reckoning that the barbed wire helped no one, Alexander made a silent pact that he would never go on a raid. If he went, he’d probably never return and, he decided, if others went, they would be sure not to come back, so there would be an exponential increase in single girls at home. Ultimately, it was a win-win.

Everything around him was grey and bleak. Even the weather cowered from the horrors, and the sky was always darkened by gas, smoke and destruction. Running a finger over a barb on the fence, Alexander looked at the carnage and desolation, his simple mind trying to make sense of Man’s futile wars.