A War In The Trenches

• Eva Wang, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2022

Gunshots split the cold night air and I woke up, fully armed and very pale.
Voices were lashing at the walls of our dug trench and, without any hesitation, I drew out my gun, fitted some ammunition with difficulty and began to fire at the German soldiers very half-heartedly.
It was Christmas Eve on the Western Front, 1914, and it was definitely not the most determined gun-firing I had accomplished and had come out of alive. Soon my hands were sweaty and my face shining in stickiness, but a soldier was not to give up because of physical discomfort. I took aim and shot between a small gap in the wires. Austria-Hungary was the starter of the war. A war that wasn’t anticipated by many.

When I had ducked down for the twentieth time because a bullet was whizzing past, I realised that the booming noises crashing around my ears were eazing up a little. Ignoring this, I refitted and fired again. Then, sometime around 2 in the morning, flashes of deadly balls suddenly stopped altogether.

Curious and wary, I peeked my helmet and an eye up above the trench and peered around cautiously. Then I poked Arden, my older brother, real hard in the ribs. He didn’t flinch.

‘What?’ He whispered instead.

‘What do you mean, what? Why’s no one firing? Are there more enemies coming?’
I hissed. Arden shrugged. I ducked down and was surprised to hear a snatch of song.
My eyebrows raised and I pressed my head as good as it would go against the wire. More carols drifted out at me.

Then something far less weird. The whizzing of a shot. I bent quickly, but it was too late. The dizzy of pain was, incredibly, not enough to block out shouting. Then, dimly, I knew that the soldier who had hit me in the arm was being criticised severely. Why, I did not know or care.

Kneeling, shocked, stars dancing in my eyes, the mud of the trench splattering my pants to make them wet and dirty, I struggled back up and, with a squelch and a small wince, pulled out the bullet.

Staggering a little as some Royal Army Medical Corps rushed over, a light winked brightly in my mind’s eye and I felt myself being dragged off on some stretcher.

Silently I thanked god for still being alive, l groped in my pocket for my gun and fired into the enemy trenches one more time.

Watching the bullet land with a thud and a wince of pain in the German camp, I stared sadly at the vivid, twinkling bright stars in the dark. I might make it out of transfusion and operation. Might. But that ‘might’ was the spirit of a determined fighter.