September 2nd 1942, Front line trenches
“Screech” that was the shrill blast of Corporal Samson’s whistle indicating the change in night watchmen. The frontline trench was dug at least six foot into the ground with barbed wire lining the top and men in the bottom. It has rained for the past three weeks so the ground is sodden and the men are disease ridden. The only shelter from the torrential downpour is to move back into the sleeping quarters where the men eat and sleep. By avoiding the rain you run the risk of being bitten by rats or having a shell land on you.
Lieutenant James wielding was on night duty when the whistle was blown fro him to be relieved of duty. His shift was fairly quiet apart form the occasional German he managed to pick off with his sniper rifle. He was on duty from three in the morning until five. Throughout this time he sat watching the enemy trenches for signs of movement or an attack whilst smoking his last rations of cigarettes. When a comrade relieved him he stepped off the wooden platform camouflaged with trees and made his way back into his trench. Both sides were still firing shells hopelessly missing each other and when the odd one did land in the right place a flash of light and men’s bodies were seen flailing in the air.
Wielding arrived back at his designated area of the trench to find his comrades playing cards in the dug out and only a few were out baring the rain and the howling wind. He decided to change his grotty socks that haven’t been washed in at least a year or two nor have been removed from his feet. He prised off his boots that were clogged up with mud and full of rat bitten holes and mouldy laces. The stench was dreadful it probably would have wiped out he enemy on its own. Never mind guns and bombs just remove your shoes in front of them. Underneath the boots revealed a pair of socks, which were almost part of his feet because they had been welded in place by mould and dampness. His toes were turning black and his nails were about to drop off because they were so curled and shredded. His feet looked like someone had got a blowtorch and some plastic and burnt his feet then put them in molten plastic.
Wielding grabbed a can of water from where the men were sitting and poured it onto his almost dead feet in an attempt to soften the sock. Then he got his pocket knife and took out a large blade and sliced the sock to make it easier to peel off. With help from a bar of soap he managed to rip and tear the entire sock off and half of his skin. When his foot was red raw he got a first aid bandage and wrapped it tightly around it. He repeated the whole procedure for the other foot but the other one was harder to pull off so he cut his skin off. After replacing his boots he stood up to test out the strength of his agonising feet. They were ok to walk on for a while. Meanwhile outside the rain had stopped and the sun was protruding thorough the dark clouds. Everyone had poured out of their bunkers to take in the heat and enjoy the sunshine while it lasted.
Although the shells were still landing and guns still blazing people were happy due to the fact that the rain was over at last. As wielding had some time off duty he felt wet and unclean so he wandered through the message trenches careful not to tread on any dead bodies or disturb any sleeping people. Finally he reached a small wooden covered trench where there were people having showers under buckets of water and others cleaning out of bowls then using hand towels to dry themselves off. James found a spare bowel and filled it with water from the well as they were miles form anywhere the water was cold so he stripped off and washed himself. He managed to find a smidgen of soap as ell which he used wisely on his very scruffy and long black curly hair. Once he was satisfied that he was clean he put his very wet and cold uniform back on and trudged back through the slimy mud to his trench.
When he arrived back everything was different. There were no men playing cards, no one on guard and a huge crater the size of 10 people had appeared in the ground. “oh no” he exclaimed looking around in disbelief at the wreck. He looked closely at the wall of the trench and realised it was an odd colour. When he got closer and studied it he realised it was blood and obviously a shell had landed and blown everyone to smithereens. To avoid being caught himself he went into a dug out where there were cards strewn across the place and people lying face down in the mud with broken limbs scattered around the place. He picked up one of the stools the men were sitting on from amongst the carnage and sat down at the table. It was breakfast time and he hadn’t eaten for days so he decided to have the rations of the dead men who lay around him. He opened a tin of corned beef and started wolfing it down his throat. In about five minutes he had opened and eaten all the dead men’s rations around him. He was ravenous. The rations were in very small quantities so six was enough of a good breakfast for him.
After stuffing himself he decided to venture back out into the bloodshed and mayhem of the battlefield. By now he was used to the constant sound of shells exploding and guns rattling so it didn’t come as a shock to him when he went back out to do his day shift on guard.
September 2nd 2002, School
The school bus pulled up outside the front gates at about half past eight. I gathered my things and told Susie I would see her tonight at home. We walked into school together past all the other pupils walking around minding their own business or deep in conversation. I waved goodbye to my sister at her form room and started to walk towards mine. As I have no friends there is no point in me talking to anyone or more to the point no one bothers to talk to me. I don’t see what is wrong with me I mean I try to dress well and talk politely but everyone just laugh at me and calls me hand-me down boy. I carried on walking past large groups of sniggering teenagers and boys rapidly talking about last nights match and what is on TV tonight. I can’t help but notice that everyone is staring at me and whispering. Oh well I’m used to it. All I have to do is keep focused on succeeding gin my education and keep my self to my self.
I am now in my form room. It is a large room in the bottom of a modern block. The block consists of four stories and five rooms on each floor. As I am on the bottom there is not need to pass any more people. In the room there are filing cabinets at the back and lots of tables and chairs all over the room. At the front there is a chalkboard and a new whiteboard. This is primarily a maths room but can be used for any lesson. It also has the usual overhead projectors and board markers n our form there is no designated area for each place to sit so I just sit at the front because that way I am away from all the naughty people at the back and am closer to the teacher if I need help or someone to talk to. I take my seat and check I have everything in my bag that I need for the long day ahead of me. Pencils, pens, rubber, ruler, sharpener, pencil case, books and of course my lunch homemade by my mum.
The time is 8:45 so people should start coming in to start school with form time. Of course my form tutor has to come in as well. I like him because I can trust him and take about anything I want to and he will always listen to me. He is almost like the dad I never had. His name is Mr Jones and he is tall with brown hair scattered with grey parts. He doesn’t look a day older than 30 but I'm sure he is much older than that because when he stands up from his chair he looks tired. His eyes are hazel and deep so that when you look into them he is always listening. He is trying to grow a beard at the moment but it doesn’t grow the way he wants it so he always ends up coming into school with stubble. He is very masculine man with a long nose and wide shoulders and arms that look like he was a body builder once. He speaks very quietly but everyone hears him and he pronounciates with perfect clearness. He has stubby legs and is quite sporty but enjoys cigars. By this time there are about half a class full that is about 15 all chatting away with each other.
No one has come to sit with me but I don’t mind because I like my space, it gives me time to think without being disturbed. It would be nice if someone would take me for who I am and not judge me by my clothes and appearance. That is just modern society I guess and the way peer pressure works. I’m happy though because I have my books to keep me occupied. I want to be an author like Jane Austin sometime because the way she writes just keeps me captivated the whole way through the book. I love reading and classical music because I can relax with a book and bit of Mozart in the background.
The bell has just rung for the start of school and the rest of the form ha just poured in the door laughing and talking merrily about their holidays. As usual people are making rude comments about me like “he never changes his clothes” or “what a skank”. They don’t think I can’t hear what they say but I can and I don’t like it but there is nothing I can do about it. Even the girls take the mickey. At last Mr Jones is in the room. When he is in the room is silent and there is certain warmth that fills me with joy. He takes the register and when he calls my name besides sniggers I still reply with “yes sir” as politely as I can. The bell rings for the end of form and I wait for everyone to leave before me other wise I will probably be pushed and shoved about.
First lesson is maths that I like a lot. After maths there is English, this isn’t that fun because I sit next to a bully who kicks me all the time. Next is break time when I visit the only place I am safe from people. The library is the other side of the school from my form room so I hurry to it for 15 minutes of reading. The next two lessons of science and Spanish are easy because again I sit at the front so they pass without any confrontations form other kids.
Without even knowing it before too long I am back in the library in my favourite comfortable leather armchair one which when you sit down in you don’t just stop on the surface you sink straight into it. I have sat here so many times the shape of my backside is moulded into the seat and the smell of my aftershave is soaked into the material. I have just finished the whole Tom Clancy series so I am now looking for a new book to read. Shelves stacked high to the ceiling and adventure books surround my area I always sit at. I most enjoy books with boring covers because they turn out to be the most interesting such as the bibl, which is quite good even though I am not religious at all.
My area is quite secluded from the rest of the world so I could be so interested in a book I might not hear the bell, which has happened before, and the clerk has to disturb me to remind me to go to lessons. The good thing about the library is that it is quiet and so there are no distractions and I can have my lunch in privacy.
On this occasion I stood in front of the mountain of books before me and started reading some of the covers to see which would interest me most. I was on the fifth row of books straining my neck to read the covers when I plucked out a brown covered book which was thickly covered in dust and was as small as a pocket notepad. I sat it down on the coffee table in front of me and blew off the dust and the wiped it with my cuff. Underneath the layers of years I revealed a brown leather cover with gold letters on the front in italics handwritten simply saying James Wielding. The corners were golden metal finished neatly with a lining of red ribbon. The book was packaged tightly together with gold thread and tied at the front with a bow and sealed with a blood red wax stamp. This is certainly is a very strange book I said to myself I have never seen anything quite like it. How very queer.
Upon finding this book without knowing it but my life was about to be under threat. I was just about to sit back down when the air conditioning vent just above my head pumped out some weird smelling gas. I didn’t feel ill at the time but half way during last lesson, which was art I began to feel groggy and my eyes swelled up. I kept needing tissues from the teacher to blow my nose and by the end of the lesson my condition had deteriorated so badly that I had a burning fever and a headache, I ran to the school bus ignoring Susie asking me what was wrong and the journey seemed to take half the time. When I reached my house I ran as fast as I could to the shower and rinsed myself with cold water to stop my self from burning up. My mum came in and kept questioning what I was doing and I quite simply told her I didn’t feel well at all.
Jane put me to bed after reading my temperature as 106 and gave me painkillers and Paracetamol in hope that I would recover by the morning. As expected I had not recovered and my temperature had soared to 112. By this time my mum was on the phone to the doctor asking his advice. He just immediately advised me to go to hospital and get checked out there.
Jane raced me to the nearest hospital still in my pyjamas and wrapped in blanket. When we arrived I described my symptoms and they immediately took me to an isolation ward. They put me in an incubator and advised my mum to stay away. She insisted on staying to find out what was wrong with me like any caring mother would do she stayed by my bedside. For about a day the doctors and nurses moved around me in a funny way taking my temperature and blood pressure every half an hour and measuring anything else that would be useful for diagnosis.
Tow days later I was diagnosed with having legionnaires disease. I asked the nurse on duty at night if I was going to die and to my great relief “no” was the reply. That night I kept turning thoughts in my head wondering how I could have contracted it but I didn’t’ have a clue. All I could think of was that it was in the food I ate or something. In the morning I asked the doctor if they knew what it came form and he said he was perplexed because there has only been one other case recorded since about 100 years ago. All of the morning they asked me questions like what were my last movements and if I noticed anything about m environment I was in and what I ate. That afternoon to my joy they think they had a cause. The air conditioning vent in the library. As I wasn’t allowed any visitors because it could be contagious I was pleased to have a package from my sister Susie. I opened it and to my great surprise along with chocolate she had sent me the book I was reading in the library. There was a small note enclosed which simply said “hope you get well soon P.S. the librarian is lending you this to read it is a diary from WW1 love Susie and mum”. So I peeled off the seal and untied the bow and turned the first page and read.
September 3rd 1942, Front line trenches
It’s so cold here. The sky gets lit up every few minutes by the shells that fly over towards us and their explosions – I daren’t fall asleep otherwise I could be the next victim of their destruction – just like the young man who was blown to pieces only minutes ago – it was terrible this whole place is terrible. At the moment I’m sitting gin a trench full of mud and sludge – I haven’t washed in days and the place is crawling with rats.
The gas is one of the worst things – I’ve seen men struggle to breathe almost drowning in the gas and coughing up their lungs as they writhe in agony and terror, as the green mist moves toward our trenches - this place must be the closest place on earth to hell. The stench of death lingers in the air, and the cries of terror as young men are sent over top and whole regiments blown away in a matter of second by the marauding shells and constant flow of bullets or the silent advancement of the gas.
Incomplete bodies are taken back to the trench and thrown into a wagon – without any ceremony or even a prayer and a shell holes are littered with half dead bodies groaning in their disturbed sleep. Today a young man, only sixteen years old who had lied to the enlistment sergeant in order to join-up lost his mind. After the orders to charge were given he ran back to the trench with the shock of the shells and was shot by the sergeant: how could he have done that? He shot one of his own men. There is no glory in this war at all, the fact of the matter is that we’ve been tricked into enlisting. This battlefield isn’t glorious, our country lets us lie here in sludge and mud, be gassed and shot and blown up by shells – we’re fighting a politicians war and we are the pawns.
