Valiant Volunteers

Prologue

Charlie tasted dirt in his mouth. His head throbbed though he couldn’t hear anything but a faint howling. Spitting and choking, he tried to get up, brushing the wet warm gunk from his eyes. Blue sky above, have to move, his mind shouted, but something heavy held him in place. He pushed frantically struggling to move his limbs. Once he snorted his nostrils clear the stench gagged him. Wriggling his head and shoulders free he saw a heavy timber across his chest. It was embedded in the ground grotesquely impaling the lower half of a torso. Charlie retched. Could that be me? Am I dead, dying?

Gulping the foul air, Charlie heaved at the timber. The revolting sight curiously fascinated him. Thick wood stuck up obscenely from the crotch. Still confused, Charlie focused on the source of the smell, shredded entrails, likely his own.

Spitting and thrashing he tried to clear his eyes. Why didn’t it hurt, he wondered? Hands clawed at his face. Figures appeared. Deep within him something demanded action. Dead or alive, mutilated or whole, he had to fight for the light. He saw the timber rise trailing a pair of legs still wrapped in puttees and wearing boots. God the stink, Charlie thought. Is this what we are reduced to?

Staring back at him, an incongruous blue sky glaring pure and unstained. Death? Was he caught between life and death? Each labored breath stung of bile and that horrible smell. Lord, have mercy on me!

He began to wonder how he could live without half his body. Someone was digging, tossing chunks of material and dirt off him. Charlie slipped momentarily into self-pity. This wasn’t new. He’d seen enough of it happening to others. Time to make peace with God. Not too late, never too late.

Time slowed. Waves of despair rolled over him. He couldn’t quit, but seeing his torn body and smelling his own entrails made him long to sleep, to escape somehow. Why it didn’t hurt baffled him. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating, trying to feel the pain that had to be there.

Nothing.

He forced his eyes open. Across the robin’s egg blue moved a single object with bright circles of color on its extremities. A flying machine, his brain registered.

As his rescuers dug, his thoughts shifted to soaring above the muck. He imagined being astride an airborne mount moving freely in all dimensions unrestrained by walls of dirt.

“Allez-y,” someone commanded, the voice coming as if through a cloth.

“Affreuse!”

“Allez cochons,” a voice of authority urged, “il n’y a pas du temps!”

Time for what? Charlie thought. The feint trace of the single aircraft, now out of sight, pushed him past imagination until he was flying high in the sky birdlike—angelic. Yes! Like an angel.

“Water, you fool! Clean him off. Mother of God! What in heaven’s name have we wrought?”

“Get out of the way, Aumonier! This one’s not ready for you.”

“Goddamn chaplains!” someone shouted. “Always in way, but never there when you need them.”

“Watch your tongue soldier,” the priest said. “Even here in the trenches the Lord hears your wickedness.”