It is Sweet and Good
A short story describing some of the horrors of war.
BOOM! A disappointed shell slammed into the ground behind us, sending up a shower of dirt and mud. We didn't care. We barely heard it. Like sleepwalkers we were, bent double like old beggars, trudging through the sludge at the bottom of the trench. We were just happy to be leaving the battlefield behind us for a while. We were going back to base. Drunk with fatigue, we limped on, though many of us had lost our boots. Squelch, squelch, squelch. Our feet in the mud.
Another shell collided with the ground. In front of us this time. Something else landed in the mud at our feet. Someone shouted. "Gas! GAS! Quick boys!" Startled into a panicked frenzy, we fumbled with our gas masks, trying to put them on. Just in time. I fit the clumsy helmet to my face, and the canisters of gas exploded. The trench quickly filled with sickly green gas.
Someone hadn't managed to don his mask in time though. He had dropped it in the mud. As he bent down to snatch it back up, a canister went off in his face. I could see him yelling out, stumbling around clutching at his eyes as the mustard gas ate away at his lungs and eyes.
I watched as he floundered around, as if under a green sea. I watched him drowning. He reached out his arms and plunged at us, guttering, choking, seeking something to make this pain and agony go away. He screamed. Blood gurgled in his lungs and throat, spilling out his mouth, until he finally fell, face-down in the muck.
We carried our fallen comrade back to base, his blood making out a crimson line that soon mixed in with the sludge. We lay him in the wagon, his white eyes still writhing in his skull. A tear rolled down my cheek, carving a line through my mud-encrusted face. Each bump, every jolt brought another wave of blood gurgling forth from his froth-corrupted lungs. It was obscene to see this - that war could cause such destruction.
Friends. Do not believe the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.