Letter From the Trenches

My numb feet swelled in my boots as I squatted with the others in the frozen mud.

McCombs had scrounged some charcoal somewhere and made a fire in a 305mm Skoda shell the Germans left behind when they retreated.

We crowded around its scant heat, holding over the flames our tins of bully-beef skewered on bayonets.

Everybody had snipers deployed all along the lines, so our chief amusement was putting a helmet atop a stick and waving it above the trench wall.

We’d take bets on how long before it was shot through.

This seldom took longer than a half-minute.

 

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