The Jabberwock

How long had it been? 

Days? Weeks? Months? 

Perhaps only hours, hours of minutes of seconds of this. 

Of lying here, of waiting, praying for anything, God damn it, anything to give him salvation. Be it a hand descending from heaven, reaching out to take him up, up and away to a place he knew, or the cold hand of death, ascending from the earth, dragging him to a place more hellish than this. 

He laughed. No place is more hellish than this. A more suitable fate for him than anything would be to stay here, in a war that just never quite seemed to end. It was as if he looked off the edge of a cliff, peering into a chasm, and wanting, praying to leap off, off into any other place. And yet he stood still. Still on the edge of a cliff. 

It felt as if his legs would not move, in fact, they literally could not move. They were crooked, bent in jagged, broken lines rendering them useless. A wound not only in his body, but in his soul. For he was at the mercy of the world. At the mercy of his comrades’ devotion to him. He could see them, on the horizon. Their helmets only occasionally throbbing out of the trenches he remembered digging. How long ago was that now? Two months, two months before this. Before this nightmarish shootout. He’d only seen true combat in quick, short bursts before this. It was clean, purposeful; it resolved quickly. Similar to an execution, he thought. Where he was now was nothing like that- this was a slaughter. A bloody and seemingly infinite mess of a stalemate of which’s only resolution was the utter annihilation of either side. There would be no surrender, no white flags. Only a winner, and a loser. 

The whining began again. That horrible, awful whining. It wasn’t the following boom that shocked him. In fact, he’d grown quite used to, even comfortable with the noise. It was that shrieking of the shells as they plummeted to the earth, as if an angel had fallen from heaven, determined to punish those below her. That’s what this was. Punishment. 

He braced himself, pressing his back further into the barrier he laid against. He knew his vision would be blurred and blackened by even the adjacency of the explosions, shaking his body and mind. He also knew they weren’t aimed for him. For all the enemy knew, he was a dead man. He only hoped his comrades didn’t think the same. They’d retaliate with their own artillery, continuing this game of catch, of back-and-forth they were playing. He knew the sounds of men arming the cannons all too well, the shouting and that slow groaning of the machine. He heard that now, ever so faintly. It was covered by a cascade of bullets, flashing their way out of the trenches. The booming filled the entire valley, ricocheting off walls and off bodies. Hardly ever had he seen a man be shot, he knew for a fact not a single of the array would actually find a

target. It was only the threat that kept enemy heads down. It was the threat that should have kept him down, but it hadn’t. He’d been a fool, charging into this den of murder he now bled in. 

He continued in his wait, a muffled cry of fire! only hardly gracing his ears. He expected a thump and for the whining to yet again prevail- but no whining ensued. Instead only the silence of confusion amongst men, followed by a harsh, guttural cry, and the desperate scattering of bodies. But they were not fast enough. Even from where he lay behind his wall, he could see it. This nightmarish fireball, larger than anything he’d seen before. It rose from the ground, consuming men whole, ripping their screams away from them as they became charred corpses in the mud. And then, more. The set of shells piled nearby erupting into one, two, three- several, lets say, explosions. Men’s minds and bodies incinerated, destroyed beyond recognition. The cries of nearly one hundred sons as their last breaths shuttered through lungs turning to dust. 

Instantly, the man who laid behind the wall thought, that his friends had died. Not thought, knew. He knew his only hope, the hand reaching toward him from the heavens; had been destroyed in that fireball alongside men who knew his name. Those remaining were in shock, littered among the trenches clutching their bodies as they were still whole. The distraction was so prevalent that for several moments, the cascade ended. The flashes stopped coming, the bullets stopped flying. For a moment, he could hear a thing he’d not heard in a long while. Silence. 

It did not last. A single cry broke out, shattering the silence the man had looked into as if it were the glass of a mirror. A cry of the enemy. Of that language. He’d become somewhat acquainted with it, if only in its more gauche terms. The terms of men whose lives are put at stake. The term cried was one that rattled his mind, a striking coldness penetrating his entire body. 

VERGELTUNG! 

It was followed by the screams of tens of hundreds of men, a stampede of bullets and of chaos. Growing louder yet louder as they grew closer, the man felt as if the world was falling upon him. As if hell itself had risen, and it reared its ugly, red face towards behind him in a mass of flesh, blood, and swastikas. He sank lower behind his barrier, hearing plunk after plunk of bullets digging into it, its weight shifting. He looked behind himself the best he could to see if it would fall, and was met with a plunk so loud that for a moment he believed he’d been shot. 

His comrades remaining in the trenches began to shuffle, all scrambling towards the few small bores in dirt in which they could remain unseen. The man was sure they were screaming, bloody mary at that, but their calls could not be heard over the Germanic mob rapidly ensuing. The man had known this would happen. He’d hoped it would not, but it was either this or death to the pain of his broken body. Maybe he’d get to see just one more Nazi die before a bullet or two

transformed him into yet another sunken, wasted corpse. It was nice, he thought, to have tried. Because god damn, had he tried; and for the moments before his death, he felt pretty alright. 

The corners of his vision blackened and soured, blurring the world into a mess of movement and blood. Only vaguely did he see the cohort of men swarm around him, not men of Germany, but of his own. His comrades. 30 or 40 of them, rising from the trenches with weapons in their fists and terror in their eyes, looking death in its eyes and daring it, begging it to look away. For some for America, but for most, to know that god damn it, I tried, and hell, did they try. They charged forward into a storm; a storm of metal and guts. Men flew to the ground as if they’d run into a wall not there, hitting the ground with such force the man could’ve believed their very bones were shattered in that instant. Not that it mattered, a dead man feels no pain. The hands of the deceased reached towards the sky as their comrades, the men whose names they once knew, as if a final plea for something, anything other than this. But their comrades could hardly look down as they soldiered forward into the storm. 

A tally of corpses, that’s what they’ll be… 

The man’s thoughts began to drift, his head pounding mercilessly against his skull. He felt nothing as his eyes grew further from the world he saw, as if watching a movie titled your death. He thought he saw another man’s hands block the little vision he had left, a face perhaps, trying to wake him from the crumbling world he saw before him. Yet he could not. He would not, he knew. He knew not a great many things, but this he did. The other man faded, it was as if he could see right through him. As if he were thousands and thousands of miles from here, spectating a war without reason. A silly, silly war which had taken a great many mens’ lives. He would now join them. Join his brothers and sisters in wherever it was they’d ended up. Nowhere, probably. But hell, better than here. Better than the edge of this damn cliff. 

His head floated in a cloud above all clouds, he saw bedrooms and ballgames and schoolyards and weddings, the places inhabited by a man he once was. He saw the car he’d first driven, the bat he’d used in his first game. The desk he’d sat at, the one in math, next to that boy he’d been friends with. What was his name? Did he have a name? No matter. 

He saw faces on faces, rooms behind doors, ever expanding planes of grass in which he’d once played in. He saw a city, a city of lights. Of flashes and of cars, of noises and of people. Of places and of sounds. Of all he’d once known to love. Of music and pictures, of games and of paper. Of water and of dirt, of fire and of the sky. The beautiful, beautiful sky.

Addressed to the lovely Mrs. Smith, Dated November 15, 1944 

I, Lieutenant Leroy Bartholemew Tucker of the United States Military, I am contacting you in regards to your husband, Mr. Montgomery Smith. Your husband was a good man, Mrs. Smith. A great man at that. I knew him personally, and have no fear in whether what I say is the truth. I have made it my duty to contact you. Unfortunately, I cannot be present to console you for the war is ongoing, and I apologize for both. 

Your husband was killed in action at a conflict in Hürtgen Forest of which has not resolved. I am unfortunately required to inform you that it is likely he suffered for a great deal before his ultimate demise, as was confirmed by Prv. John Doe who also claimed and returned his identification, or “dog” tags. He was standing adjacent but outside of a trench he had dug several months prior. It’s likely it was not under instruction he be there, and therefore no particular officer liable for his injury. 

He was struck by a nearby mortar’s shell, severely wounding his legs. It’s likely he dragged himself to a nearby barricade built of repurposed bags of flour. There he spent what we estimate to be over a week, barely managing a continued survival. To survive such a long time without support is a feat we award him the Distinguished Service Cross, a medal of which will be documented alongside your name as well as his. 

His final death was that to blood loss and that to dehydration. An unfortunate demise unfitting of his character. Pv. John Doe approached him in what was likely his final moments during a German rally, the only man to do so among over fifty others on the defense. Another fifty whose deaths were far more brutal than that of your husband, a tally of corpses, if you will. It was only Doe’s life who was spared, as he dragged your husband’s corpse to the trenches he’d dug. 

I understand your choice for a closed casket funeral, the eyes of god don’t wish to look upon the hideous crime your husband was subjected to. You have my deepest condolences, Mrs. Smith, I will make it my goal to speak with you further, preferably in reality, if you would like. 

May god put his soul to rest and yours along with, 

Lt. Leroy Tucker of The United States Military