No Man’s Land

“Fire…embers…parts. Parts of bodies sprinkled all around to rot in this sodden mud. This mushy, mildew teeming with pools of bubbling malady. If you were lucky, you’d only catch a whiff of it, and see only the stained white skulls, having already shed their fleshy coating. Lifeless…on display…like trophies. There is no honor blanketing the dead. No notion of victory, heroism, or patriotism. Just the deepest and darkest hole left in your chest, of abandonment. You wouldn’t believe how lonely it is to be surrounded by the dead. More alone than actually being alone. At first, I found it eerie, walking amongst seas of static corpses. No pulse except the rhythm of the guns. You get used to it. You get acquainted with the different body parts, the same way you would recognize different cuts of meat at the butcher’s. Nothing glorious about holding a steak. Nothing glorious about symbolizing a severed head to be a radiating beacon of victory. Uniforms all look the same when covered in mud and dark, oxidized blood. The smell of iron and filth is absolutely revolting! Are you getting this? Are you writing it down exactly as I describe it? It’s important that you do!”

“Relax Private Burton, take a sip from your canteen. I know it’s filled with something stronger than water, just like everyone’s canteens are these days…at least those who got lucky while rationing the supplies. Don’t worry private, I am no rat.”

Private Jacob Burton, a thirty-year-old soldier with the British Expeditionary Forces, grabbed his left hand with his right to stop it from trembling. The artillery boomed in the distance as the Great War continued to advance its awful tally of the faceless dead, joining in from all fronts. It wasn’t able to advance much else, and everyone realized too late, that trench warfare was a hasty, horrible idea not worth even an inch.

“Now, let’s start from the beginning. You stated that you’re a private in the British Expeditionary Force. Which division do you belong to?” The gaunt private clattered his canteen against the small, discolored table, almost spilling its valuable contents. “First Division, Hellfire squad,” said Jacob stoutly, accompanied by an automatic salute. “Hellfire?” asked Captain James Dickinson. “That’s right sir,” Jacob answered, staring off into the distance at the threaded line made up of his haunting past. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of any ‘Hellfire squad.’ Are you sure that wasn’t a nickname or informal jargon amongst soldiers?”

“No sir, that’s what we were called. You won’t find us in any documents or official reports. We were what you would call, ‘specialists.’”

Captain Dickinson ran his fingers through his mustache while scrutinizing Private Burton’s eyes. Was he having a laugh? He couldn’t detect the telltale signs of a lie hidden somewhere within those lifeless eyes. In fact, he couldn’t detect much of anything, except for long lost ruins of strewn memories, echoing soul scarring actions…and this gravely concerned the captain. “Specialists of what exactly? What was your mission?”

Private Burton’s eyes glistened with panic and the dread of memories, long smashed to pudding underneath the last remaining stone of sanity. “Death. Agony…and most of all…fear. Our mission was fear.”

“I do not follow. Are you referring to combat? Were you ambushed? Overrun? Is that why you were found alone?” Private Burton stared off into the distance again. He could see the peasants’ faces, of all ages, genders, and forced juxtapositions with Death.

Captain Dickinson placed down his fountain pen and creaked the brittle chair loudly as he shifted his weight. He exhaled heavily through his clogged nostrils and shook his head. “Private, I want to remind you just how important it is that you tell me the truth of exactly what happened. Everyone is convinced that you’re a deserter, and frankly, based off of what you’ve told me so far, I’m inclined to agree. Start making some sense. I’d suggest for you to take another swig from your canteen, take a deep breath, and tell me exactly what happened, starting from the beginning.” He did as the captain instructed, and for a brief moment felt incredibly anxious. Not because of the story he was about to tell, but because of the cannonade. Or rather, the lack of cannonade. The artillery had gone quiet for a few minutes, and the absence of booming shrapnel was silent and foreign enough to give Jacob a slight migraine. To fix this, he took another healthy swig.

“It all started with the long hill. Dead Man’s hill we called it, long before the enemy had even arrived. The French were getting ready for the imminent German attack, and their faces were dragging. We were brought in as specialists, off the record, to help prepare and fortify the villages. Can’t say our presence did those poor souls much good. In fact, we damned that land with our presence, spreading our blight wherever we went. Those poor fucking bastards! The children…not even the childr — ” Private Burton choked on his words and chugged the rest of the canteen, until every last drop had been exhausted. “Do you have any more? Anything…I’ll take anything! Please, don’t let the memories catch up! This drunken ignorance, it’s all I have left!”

“Calm yourself private!” yelled Captain Dickinson. The cannonade resumed in the distance, offering them both a sort of purposeful, distractive comfort. As long as the cannons continued to spew their shells and shrapnel, the war continued, and was that much closer to ending. He knew he shouldn’t, but he truly felt for the young man who’d obviously seen, heard, and smelled way more than he should’ve. He forgot to account for the sense of taste, but as he would soon find out with great shock, that would come later in the recollections of the tormented private. The captain, after issuing the private many warnings of sworn secrecy and systematic promises, poured into Jacob’s canteen the rest of the bourbon he’d been gifted by a local French farmer, whose barn had burned down and been reduced to ruin in the northern countryside.

“We made our way through the woods quietly, like phantoms in the night. And we indeed were phantoms who weren’t even supposed to be there. We’d all been issued Gewehr 88s and German trench knives and Mauser pistols. Even our boots were German so that the spent casings and footprints we left behind were by all means…German. Our uniforms however were British standard issue khakis and tunics, though there were no markings. No names, ranks, or any stitching, symbols or images of any kind were attached to our uniforms. We were faceless men, entities who fit somewhere in between the war’s horrors, resulting in the bashed in skulls of the men, women, and children we were supposed to be helping. We were led by Sergeant Thomas, who preferred that we call him Bás. He had a thick Irish accent and spoke with a perfunctory voice. His eyes were yellow and distant, like he was jaundiced, but with the amount of energy he put on display, you’d think he was an Olympian god! He marched us days on end, without stopping once for food or water. We ate as we went, and eventually ran out of rations, but none of us dared say anything. None, except this scrawny little boy who could barely grow a mustache. Private Wheat Stalk we called him. He looked feeble and malnourished. When he squeaked at Sergeant Bás for a rest and some food, sarge stopped dead in his tracks and turned around, heating us with his sallow face and saturnine eyes. I swear he was the Devil…Every time my eyes met his, I could feel the fires of Hell licking and immolating the core, the very center of my being! It’s why we gave ourselves the name, Hellfire Squad.”

Private Burton began to hyperventilate but distracted himself by digging his nails deep into his wrist. Captain Dickinson thumbed his nose and stared at the private with semi glazed over eyes. He was dumbfounded and didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He liked to think of himself as a pretty good judge of character. With the private however, there was no character. Only the remains of a bloody, flayed fist that was once the beating life source of an uncorrupted man.

“We came across this farmer. Frenchman, old with a kind face. He takes us in without a second thought, and we find ourselves warming through, next to the hearth of a simple living room. Our hands, fingers, nose, and ears begin to dethaw from all the senseless marching. The old farmer doesn’t speak even a vowel of English, but his kind eyes and smile are enough to let us know that he’s an angel sent from God himself, to save us from the wicked purpose for which we march. The old man’s wife walked in carrying a tray of food. It wasn’t much, though she’d managed to fry up some eggs along with a couple of hunks of bread, and a half empty bottle of red wine. It was a feast, a fine meal compared to our iron rations, the likes of which we hadn’t enjoyed since home. A couple of us, me, Atkinson, Cooper, Evans, and Fisher…we immediately dove in. Oh, and cheese! I forgot to mention the cheese. We sounded like a pack of hungry dogs, slurping, chewing, ripping apart the food with boisterous laughter. It was all jolly and merry until I saw the sergeant’s eyes. He didn’t partake in the feast and sat idly by the fire with a cigarette between his lips. I swear, I’d never seen the man eat…except for…” Private Burton cleared his throat. “Anyway, the farmer’s two daughters came in next, and all the men, including myself, went quiet. The farmer and his wife looked worried for a second, like they’d been hiding them this whole time, and them walking into the living room was a severe mistake. The old man laughed nervously and introduced his eldest daughter, Juliette. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen and had beautiful light green eyes. She gave me a kind smile which I’ll never forget. The rest of us, Atkinson in particular, gawked at her lustfully. We hadn’t seen a woman since before deployment. The other daughter was young, maybe fourteen or fifteen at most. Her breasts poked through her shirt like underdeveloped welts, or dormant volcanos that hadn’t quite mustered up the courage to erupt yet. We never got her name, but she looked each of us in the eye with utter confusion. The same kind of confusion I’m left with today, after witnessing my own two hands, and the hands of my squad, dipped and forever stained with warm blood trickling through the innocent.”

Captain Dickinson scribbled down some notes, focusing more on the mental state of the private than anything else. “Sergeant Bás’ eyes shimmered with a different kind of lust. It wasn’t sexual, though he did want their bodies. It was control and dominance at the helm, spreading the blight oozing from his black heart like a crawling disease. We were done with our meal and sarge got up to his feet, and with a slight nod of his head he thanked the nervous farmer. The old man looked like a pale, wrinkled ghost after gazing into sarge’s eyes up close for a good ten seconds. He saw what we’d seen, and instantly understood the fate awaiting him, ready to be bestowed upon him by the madman he’d foolishly invited into his home.”

“What fate? Did you rape those girls? It’s not without a heavy heart that I’ll have you know that you aren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to tell such a tale. This is war private, and with it comes the most disgusting side of us humans.”

“You’ve never heard of these kinds of defiling acts which we committed that night, captain. The kind of acts that’ll render a man damned beyond Hell. The kind of deeds that no prayer or penance can cleanse or purify. I’m tainted. My blood is tainted and fused with the pain of those who didn’t deserve a single ounce of what did them in!”

“What is it? What did you do private!”

“We took their bodies and mutilated them beyond recognition! They screamed…they begged through bloody tears for us to stop, but we didn’t. Sergeant Bás told us that we were to remain ghosts and make our way furtively through the French countryside. His previously pale, lifeless eyes had suddenly grown large with hunger, and his chapped lips trembled with an insatiable thirst. He grabbed the old farmer by the throat and threw him hard onto the wooden floor. The floorboards creaked and groaned under their combined weight as sarge jumped on top of him, strangling him with both hands. We all stared at him horrified as he bit into the old man’s neck and began slurping the dark red blood spurting from the wound. Everything went silent, except for the endless screaming of those women…They wouldn’t shut up, and their high-pitched voices forced their way into our ears like needles, pounding our brains into migraines unlike any I’d ever felt. Before we even knew what we were doing, Atkinson and Evans had snapped the old woman’s neck while I was panting hard on the floor. I felt wriggling inside my clenched palms…clenched so hard that my knuckles were pure white bone perforating through that flimsy dry skin. I was on top of Juliette, who screamed at the top of her lungs into my ear. She knew that the sound offended me, so in a moment of victimized reasoning, she stopped and looked at me with terrified, hollow eyes. Her pupils were so dilated that you couldn’t see the green in those windows to the soul anymore. She silently begged me to stop, but I heard it in a different world. My body was so far away now. My hands were senselessly and leisurely going through the motions. And to my own surprise in that forsaken moment, I’d involuntarily removed those two perfect eyeballs, and was biting into the flesh of her silky white arm. If she was screaming, I couldn’t hear it anymore. I couldn’t hear anything anymore…nothing but the stout thumping of my quickening heartrate filled with giddy abhorrence. We killed, horribly, and then we ate them as if they were Sunday’s roast…only raw. That’s what we lived off of for the weeks leading up to the battle. The flesh of weak innocence.”

Captain Dickinson pushed the nib of his fountain pen deep into the dirty journal. It flexed a bit beyond its suggested limit and leaked a nice dollop of ink through at least six pages. He cleared his throat and closed the leather-bound journal, which had a distinct scent of burned old gunpowder. “Private…” he started with a slightly higher tone. “You’re telling me that you…ate…these people, these French civilian farmers?”

“Yes” replied Private Burton immediately without hesitation. “Raw…we ate them raw, still warm from when they had life in them.”

Captain Dickinson violently clattered his fountain pen across the table and ineffectively tried to run his fingers through his buzzcut. “And I’m supposed to believe this story without a single shred of evidence! Where’s the rest of your squad? Where’s Atkinson and…and Evans…and…”

“Cooper, Fisher, and Sergeant Bás, or Sergeant Thomas if this is officially on the record.”

“What record? What exactly do you want me to write down here private? ‘Soldier who was previously thought to be a deserter, turns out to be a maniac cannibal. All is forgiven!’”

The captain and private stared at each other in silence for what felt like an eternity. At least the artillery barrage in the background was still keeping them company. “Now that you said it out loud, it does seem a bit…off.”

Captain Dickinson let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “Yes, it does sound ‘off’ as you say private. In fact, it sounds so far ‘off’ that it’s far more likely to be the fabrications of a desperate man whose time is quickly ticking away.”

“We are all quickly ticking away out here, regardless of whether or not you believe my recollections.”

“Yes private, however we’re discussing your case in particular here, and it’s your neck on the line right now. Not mine, or any of the soldiers currently awaiting orders in the trenches. So, for the last time, I suggest for you to get your story in order and tell me the truth! Oh, and private, please skip the madman’s ravings this time around…” Captain Dickinson reopened his journal and loudly tore out the utter nonsense he’d scribbled down before. He grabbed his fountain pen, which’d splattered ink everywhere from when he’d cast it aside, and patiently waited for the deranged soldier to tell his last and final version of hopefully the truth.

Private Burton stared off into the distance again with a mortified expression, curling his face into a heaping mess of twisted barbed wire. Captain Dickinson’s patience was now running on fumes. “After we crucified their remains, we moved onto the next house, and the next, until they’d all been put on display for the Germans to see. Their eyes were collected into small, woven baskets, along with their tongues and ears. I personally preferred the taste of women. Man flesh tasted off. Maybe it’s the testosterone…Have you ever noticed captain, that we only eat female animals? Cows, chickens, pigs…why should we be any different? Why should we taste any different?”

The private’s grin was very disturbing, beyond mad. “You are a one twisted bastard, do you know that? Have you any idea how crazy you sound right now! You lunatic! You honorless heretic! Fabricating these ridiculously distasteful stories to get out of your sentencing as the deserter you are!”

“Don’t you dare lecture me about honor! There is no such thing in this war! There are only the weak and the hungry. God can’t see the atrocities committed here through the puffs and shroud of enveloping smoke that has settled down in layers, blanketing both the Western and Eastern fronts; for if He did, He’d surely put an end to all this nonsense! No…There is no God here…only the Devil and his muses, his instruments, running rampant through the countryside like pest-ridden jackals. Do you think God would’ve allowed me to survive after we were all supposed to die? DO YOU!” Private Burton suddenly leapt through the air like a leopard and grabbed Captain Dickinson by his shirt collar. They wrestled for a moment, until the captain was able to subdue and throw the malnourished man across the table; and after shattering the flimsy wooden chair with his back, Private Burton cackled loudly amidst the splinters on the floor.

Captain Dickinson panted loudly, and with a bewildered expression he looked over the table to see Private Burton still laughing on his back. Then, as if a switch were flicked, the laughter subsided and transformed into a constant low moan of agony. Private Burton grabbed his temples and pressed them in as hard as he could with his thumbs. “We went from village to village, from commune to commune, until there was nothing left. No one wandered the tranquil passageways anymore, or the gentle grassy hills swaying to and fro, caught on nature’s calming winds. There was no neighborly laughter or the beginnings of young love. Nothing but death and the scent of iron lingered throughout the scarlet earth. Broken memories of lost souls wondering what they did to deserve this. What kind of demons would do such a thing to the unarmed civilians of their allies! The worst part was how they greeted us. ‘The British have arrived to push back the German advance, we’re saved!’ Their teary-eyed hopeful smiles from ear to ear hurt me the most. They didn’t know…they didn’t know…that the Devil himself was the sergeant leading this damned lot, and a convincing leader he was. He possessed this aura which reached all around him, that would instantly turn us all into the same monster that he was. Our conscience didn’t exist in the way yours does captain. There were only fleeting moments of clarity, in which we truly saw ourselves. It felt very much like one of those nightmares where you killed someone by accident and wake up soaked in sweat with the greatest relief that it was only a dream. Only we never felt absolved, except for when we walked in Sergeant Bás’ horrible aura. We didn’t feel anything then, and that was better than something. We left their bodies butchered and glistening for the Germans to see. We destroyed the enemy’s morale as they slowly inched forward towards the rotten stench of death and decay. The dirt beneath their feet was still moist from when we’d watered our seeds of evil, anointing them with fresh, pungent blood. That, according to Sergeant Bás was our purpose, and why we needed to remain as quiet and inexistent as ghosts. We were the reapers who haunted the Germans with images and scents of gore and brutality, much like Vlad ‘The Impaler’ did with the Ottomans, only Vlad did it through his own accord…or perhaps he was tormented by some sort of entity as well. Sergeant Bás wasn’t human. He wore a man’s face and walked upright like one. But he was no man…just like we were not men anymore either. We didn’t deserve that title after the massacre. The only comfort left in our desolate hearts was the realization that after all the bombing and shooting, the villagers and their homes would’ve been reduced to dust anyway. There was no way they could’ve survived that.”

Private Burton sat up and looked at Captain Dickinson, who had his hand on the butt of his revolver and his thumb on the hammer. “I really don’t care if you believe me or not, that’s what happened. We left behind some of our German weapons and items to convince the French soldiers that it was the enemy who’d fouled up their brothers and sisters so harshly and without remorse. Then, we were separated. The artillery barrage split us up, and the ringing smoke it left behind blinded us from all sense of direction. I could think clearly again without the sergeant’s influence and realized that I had one thing left to do…to kill the Devil. The ringing in my ears subsided and transitioned to the sounds of distant gunshots. They were German guns and they were close. I witnessed Atkinson blow out his own brains with his rifle. He placed the barrel in his mouth, and with a loud pop, blood trickled down his face, populating the thick strands of hair above his lip, clumping them together like a bouquet of death. I was almost shocked to see it, but nothing really gets to me anymore. I’m a veteran now…a veteran of neutral anguish. Evans wandered off into the mist with blood dripping down his cheeks from both ears. He was yelling and laughing, probably unable to hear his own voice through his eardrums, ruptured from the shell which had exploded right next to him. I never saw him again. Cooper lay on the ground next to a crump-hole, clutching his guts. They were everywhere like stringy hairs of cooling lava. He was trying to reel in the stragglers as if he were operating a fishing pole. ‘You’re fucked!’ I told him. ‘How’re gonna get all those noodles back into your belly?’ He just stared at me with a flatlined expression, moments before expiring. I swear I saw the makings of a faint grin develop on his lips right before the end. Now Fisher, that man had some bollocks. He and Sergeant Bás were wrestling it out in the mud. ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you!’ yelled Fisher, and I watched them for a good two or three minutes. I even put in some bets with myself… and even though the man had some spunk, I knew the Devil wouldn’t play fair, and he didn’t. They twisted and turned on top of poor Cooper’s still twitching guts, until sarge pulled out his jackknife and slipped it right between Fisher’s ribs. Shortly after, he let out his death moan and died with a god-awful look on his face.” Private Burton shuddered, then laughed and shook his head.

“For the Devil, living inside that man or apparition, or whatever he was, I was prepared to go all out. He didn’t cry or scream or beg for his life when I unholstered my Mauser. He just looked at me with those demonic, yellow eyes and smiled while uttering a low, guttural growl. I fired the first two shots into those eyes, reddening them, darkening them into hollow carvings of splintered bone. The other eight rounds, I fired into his torso. He didn’t make a sound and had no final expression…no remorse…no guilt…just a hunk of flesh and blood ready for decomposition. I felt emptiness…pure empty abandonment, as if whatever parasite that’d been locked inside us all had already consumed every ounce of life and slurp of soul…I wonder what he was like before all this. I wonder when Sergeant Thomas had given in, turning into Bás…Anyway, that’s when I was captured by the French and brought to you as a deserter. Oh, I deserted something alright, just not the black and white simplicity that turns the engine of your feeble mind. Go on do your worse, follow the manuscript…do your duty you bastard!”

The Webley’s barrel rattled in Captain Dickinson’s hand. He held it by his side and pointed it directly at the private’s face as he slowly got up off the floor. “You gonna shoot me? Go ahead! Give that revolver some action before the war is over! Pop its cherry, otherwise it’ll remain brand new and purposeless, while you sit back here with your fucking bourbon and fountain pens, ordering the rest of us over the trenches to aimlessly run into German bullets! Go on then! Get some blood on your hands you coward!”

Right as the crescendo of the moment was coming, there was a loud knock on the door. “Enter!” yelled Captain Dickinson out of breath from either anger or terror. “Telegram sir, from the top,” said a snotty little boy with red hair and catfish whisker-like patches for a mustache. He glanced at the captain’s revolver and then at the broken chair. Private Burton melted the boy away, turning him into a petrified turd with his abyssal gaze. “Thank you private, dismissed!”

Captain Dickinson ripped open the telegram while still holding the revolver. He snorted and smiled as he folded the damp sheet of mud blotted paper and placed it into his pocket. “Looks like we’re being called upon to aid our brothers at the river.” Private Burton looked back confused. “The River Somme private…that’s where we’re headed. I’ll even make sure that they give you a proper seat with a clear view of the battle. You’ll be in the frontline in case you’re still confused. Now gear up and follow orders soldier! We need every man we can spare, even if they’ve previously deserted.” Captain Dickinson pushed the bewildered private out of the company HQ dugout and slammed the slanted door, riddled with patches of mold and rot.

The redheaded boy, eighteen-year-old Private Arlo Hawke, later visited the captain that evening, asking to be transferred. Captain Dickinson tried to talk him down, reassuring him that there’s no shame in feeling fear before the big battle. “No” said the young private. “It’s not that sir…it’s the man with the pale, yellow eyes. He told me that he’s the Devil and to call him Sergeant Bás. He then…” The young boy retched and cleared his throat. “He then bit into his own arm and ripped out a bloody chunk, tendons and all…I’m quite convinced sir, that he indeed is the Devil…”