Green Grass on the Eastern Front
By scottishranger
Dieter was dead. I envy him, but my friend was. I used to wonder what it was like, I mean, to die. Now though, I only welcome such an embrace. At least hell would be warm. The snow keeps falling, piling up like the corpses of my comrades as time marches on. Maybe I should have said a prayer for Dieter? Maybe before the winter came we would have even buried him. Respect for the deceased had died to, the day the snow began to fall. We had found much better uses for the dead. We stripped the corpse, for this was no longer Dieter, only another body; just another body, and we threw him onto the top of our trench. Ivan and ubermenshk; commissar and feldwebel all lie up there, all concept of racial supremacy wiped out by death. Those bodies were our only semblance of protection for me, against the fierce wind that howled across this accursed Ukrainian steppe.
It is cold, so cold. I cannot remember the last time I had ever felt the warmth of the sun. I have been here for eternity, there is no Germany, no summer, and certainly no women, those are just cruel tricks of the mind and the stuff of legends. The only thing that exists is the cold, that bitter, forlorn cold that penetrates each and every bone in your body, sniffing out and extinguishing any hope you might have of getting out of here alive. We had no kerosene; we burned the last of the stuff two weeks ago. No supplies have come through since. I am forced to piss on my cracked and blistered hands, just to gain a moments heat. The wounds on my hands and feet are such that it tortures me to stand, let alone hold a mauser rifle. God, I cannot feel my fingers.
I climbed out of my tiny trench, my enclave against the winter. Running across the frozen tundra, I was exposed to everything the winter could launch against me. The wind tore in to me, invading every single crevice, every ripple in my jacket, crippling me far better than any Bolshevik bullet could achieve. Panting, I almost tripped into our forward outpost, though this must have been some kind of cruel joke because this was more of a shithole than a fort. Nothing but a hole in the ground. This little dugout was home to three other men, one just a boy. Franz I think his name was, yes, it was Franz. The child moaned softly, “Mutti, mutti ,” he sobbed. No one moved to help. “Look alive comrades, Ivan will be joining us for breakfast,” I whisper, ignoring the boy.
Dawn was upon us now, though it hardly brought any hope to us. I peered over our human windbreak, my bones crackling with the stress of so much movement. Over the top, I saw the endless field that lay ahead of me, that eternal plain of ice. This was the world of the dead, and the soon to be dead. Corpses littered my vision, nowhere could I escape death. Shell holes covered the world, like some perverse god’s painting of a field of flowers, the dried blood seeming like roses. My father had once said such a thing, that the world is god’s painting, but I always thought he meant it romantically. Maybe he did? Even so, should I ever get out of this hellhole, I promised, I would never grow roses. Never.
I strained my eyes against the white ground, my bloodshot eyes unable to see fully against the blinding light of the snow. The canvass of earth, god’s playing field, erupted. A solid line appeared on the horizon, arisen from the snow. “OOOOOUUUURRRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" The Soviets war cry pierces the morning, and the beast lunges forward. “Get me a phone!” I shout. The older of the men, an engineer, hands me it, almost dropping it with fright. I grabbed it and began cranking the handle to generate a charge. “Give my artillery!” I scream into the mouthpiece. The connection is horrible, and I begin to doubt that I am even being heard. “Where are you?” asks the impossibly calm operator. I give my coordinates and identity. Once again I am greeted by only static.
The boy screams for his mother behind me.
“Mutti! Mutti! MUTTI!”
The two other men struggle desperately with the machine gun, attempting to shove a cartridge into the gun with shaking, freezing hands. The Communist are still coming, and there are more of them, it seems a never ending tide.
“God, there are thousands of them! We have to retreat! We have to run before they get here!” cries one of the men.
“OOOOOUUUURRRRAAAAAHHHHH!” The yell is getting louder.
The machine gun crew opens fire, far too out of range to hit anything specific. Even so, the gun does kills hundreds, firing indiscriminately into the mass of soldiers. Still, the Soviets keep coming. For each one killed, a thousand step into their place.
“Where is my artillery?” I shout into the phone.
Static…
“OOOOUUUURRRRAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“mmmm-MUTTTI!”
A shot rings out, right next to me, and I am splattered with warm blood. Franz was dead, half his head blown away from the pistol he had fired at himself. His mother apparently could not scare away the monsters like the gremlins under the bed.
The black tide of Soviets was upon us, the machine gun lashing out, but to no avail. The heat of the gun was melting the snow around it. Surely we had killed hundreds by now? Still, they came on, filling the horizon.
“OOOOUUUUURRRRAAAAHHHHH!”
The sheer thunder of the charge was deafening. I did even hear the shriek of the artillery shells until there were explosions all around us, dealing death and destruction without remorse. The Soviets recoiled, and then broke backwards, the Bolsheviks temporarily stopped.
By the melted gun barrel of the machine gun, I can see a single blade of grass, surrounded by dirt. “Perhaps we will live through this after all?” I think to myself. Maybe…
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