Poppy Fields of Flanders.

Poppy fields of Flanders

Bright red poppies, waving, amongst the whispering corn, tossed around in the light spring breeze. I walk through the field, my outstretched fingers touch the drifting corn and the poppies intoxicating smell wafts up my nose into my lungs and makes me feel dizzy with the joy of the beautiful day. Imperceptibly I see a glint of metal, rusted and brown, in amongst the corn.

I walk over to it the sun is darkened by broiling dark rain clouds. Seething black with fork lightning that illuminates the poppies, as they are, a dull red black mockery of mortal flesh and blood. My heart pounds faster as I walk towards the unearthed metal the rain begins to drive down on my skull and my clothes become clinging wet and weigh me down like a suit of armour. Then I’m there. Among the blood red poppies staring at a long shattered watch and still attached after many years the cold, dead, unmoving hand of a dead man. Thus standing, with the rain beating down and the cold dread horror before my eyes, I begin to remember.

To remember a time when many lifetimes ago I stood here and saw the same thing. With the biting wind and the driving rain of a Flander’s autumn. This time though the arm is whole, no white scraped bone, no cold dead hand. But a man, writing in agony as his twisted red guts are exposed to the world and with the screams and cries of his agony other, half forgotten, sounds, sights, smells remerge to haunt my mind and prowl my dreams.

A dead mans boots inhabit the clinging, sickly, mud, stained red with blood. A haunting tribute to the effectiveness of the big guns. That even now boom their defiance, like lions fighting over a mate, through the ever present rain and lightning, whose own terrific displays are eclipsed by the sheer awesome sound and destruction of the big guns whose ever present sound feels like a long forgotten nightmare. The boots stand tall and proud amongst the blood and mud of this new war. Their blood topped legs making a harsh mockery of the poppies that will grow here hence, fertilised by a million men’s blood.

Then the whistles blow, like shrieking harpies of ancient myth that draw men to their deaths, and to our deaths we do not go gladly but with a wearisome effort we scramble over the top and dash out onto the scarred earth and mud of no mans land. And stumble and run and yell, like mad men, driven on by terror and despair towards our deaths. We dash stumble run, all the while with the clinging sticking mud to our boots, towards other men’s trenches and suddenly we’re half way there and not a shot has been fired.
Is it over?
Has the killing stopped?

But No. The killing has not stopped. Their machine guns begin to blaze and their men begin to fire their rifles with unnerving efficiency and men all around drop and fall in showers of bright red blood, like dazzling fireworks of gore. All the while the machine guns blaze like spitting demons of death that serve the only purpose, to give up their blood offering of young mans souls to the gods of war.

Suddenly I feel the white hot, searing pain that cuts through my chest and explodes through my back. I collapse to the ground. Into the clinging mud that smells of sickly, rotting men’s flesh. For how long I lay there I do not know all I know is the pain and the stench and the rats that already feast on my fallen comrades who now lay in amongst the Flander’s mud. Slowly, ever so slowly, like the slow but determined trudge of a tortoise, darkness overtakes me as my red lifeblood seeps into the mud. I find my breathing becoming ragged and suddenly I cant breath my lungs won’t inflate and slowly, agonisingly slowly I can feel my life slipping away until the darkness takes and embraces me and the pain is gone.



The rain has stopped the clouds departed and the warm sun is drying my clothes. My soul has seen much of death and war, though this shell has not. Behind me the huge monument stands as a testament to the dead men who still lie buried where they fell in the mud of Flander’s fields, to satisfy old men in top hats lust for war and for power. The monument has many names and each is a testament to wars terrible price.

Very good, topical too what with Remembrance Day recently. There are a few grammatical errors but nothing huge. Overall I think it shows a considerable improvement over your earlier work.

Ah shucks.

There probaly are a few grammatical errors as I'm crap at grammar. I'll have a look through for tense confusion as I may be able to spot it.

Edit: One tense confusion. Two of repeated words.

Very good Zelda. I agree with Froggy that this is much better than your earlier work. Only, I got a bit lost in those long sentences without commas ~D .

~D

The commas and long sentences are intentional. As this was originaly written as a poem but didn't work so I transfered it to story form and in the process it took a lot of the non standard punctuation and the long pauses and the fast paste sections with long sentences. it makes it a little confusing I can understand but if you read it as it is it makes a wierd and twisted sense.