Fic: Letter from the Grave
Feb. 17th, 2008 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aibhinn_ficsTitle: Letter from the Grave
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aibhinn
Summary: Tommy's final letter to his father.
Spoilers: 2x03, "To the Last Man"
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of war.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This is making me no money, and they're not my characters. I just enjoy playing with them.
Author's note: Written for round 1.10 of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
writerinadrawer. Prompt: a letter. Required additional element: flag (as a noun or a verb).
Letter found in the personal effects of Private Thomas Reginald Brockless, 10th West Yorkshire.
Dad,
I can write this to you because I know damn well that nobody will ever send it and nobody will ever read it. It'll be chucked in the bin and that will be that. But at least I'll have got it off my chest.
They want to send me back to the front. But I can't go, Dad. I don't expect you to understand why. Nobody can understand unless they've been there, and while I'm glad that old knee injury kept you out of uniform, it still means you can't really know what it's like.
That sounds like an excuse, doesn't it? It's not. There's no possible way to put into writing what it's like to be on the front lines of this war, but I'll try.
You live in a hole in the ground. A trench is nothing more than a rabbit warren dug into the dirt, reaching three or four feet above your head, open to the sky. It stretches for what seems like miles in either direction, and it becomes your whole world. The dirt's clay, so when it rains, none of it soaks into the soil; the water pools on the floor and turns the clay into a slick mess that sends you sliding all over the place. If you're a lucky bastard, you'll fall and break your leg so you can be sent back to heal up; mostly you just crash into the dirt walls and come away wet and filthy. But that's nothing new, because 'wet and filthy' is your way of life. You sleep in the mud and eat in the mud; every once in a while someone will rig a bit of tarpaulin to create a reasonably dry place for a few blokes to get together for a game of cards. Or if you're lucky, some officer will let you dry out a bit in his 'quarters' (not that it's anything much, just a room dug out of the mud and reinforced with planks) when the rains get too bad. So many poor sods with foot-rot because nobody can ever keep their feet dry; the mud is a thin slurry that soaks in through the seams of your boots and coats your feet in a slippery layer that feels like you're walking in blood.
Some never make it long enough to get rotted feet, though, when the commanders get the urge to send us up and over. With the Union Jack in the lead, we scream defiance as we charge over No-Man's-Land towards the German line. The machine guns come alive and no-one's immune, no-one; we fall like dominos in its path, officers and enlisted alike. I've tripped over fallen comrades, put my foot into my best mate's guts, watched men trying to stick their shot-off limbs back on or walk on a foot that's been shot to pulp. I've seen men whose faces were missing, with only the name on their uniforms to show who they were. If we're lucky, a third of us make it back. But the top brass don't give a monkey's arse. They just keep sending us over the top. "One last push and on to Berlin." Sometimes I wonder if any of them have ever set foot on a battlefield.
And the shelling! It never stops, never; constant pounding, constant noise, constant screams. Ours, theirs, it doesn't matter; we're all out there to die anyway. Think of the factory going at full blaat, right? The din that it makes? Now imagine that all day, all night, for months. It gets into your head, it fills your brain until you just want to scream, stop, for the love of God, for five minutes! But then you look around and all the other blokes are going on about their business, and so you squash the anger down and sit on it because it wouldn't do to let the others see you going mad.
And we do. We do go mad out there. Men break and scream and sob for their mothers. They try to climb out of the trenches just so the Huns will shoot them down. Sometimes they take a gun to their commanding officers. Sometimes they take a gun to themselves. I don't think there's a man there who hasn't stared at his Webley and wondered what it would be like to put a bullet through his head. Would you even hear the noise of the gun firing? Would you feel the pain? See the flash of light? Even if suicide is a sin, would you really be condemned to hell for trying to escape the never-ending war and the stupid commanders who send us over the top to get mowed down like so much wheat?
And if you were condemned to hell—would that be any worse?
They're eyeing me now, the nurses. They know that I'm nearly healed up and ready to be sent back. The officers know it, too; they make their rounds of the wards once a week, and one of them stopped at my bed today. He put his hand on my shoulder and said in that gung-ho way they have, "So, old man, ready to rejoin your unit and fight the good fight?"
I couldn't answer. How can I go back to that? How can I willingly walk back into that war, when the sound of a dropped bedpan is enough to send me diving for cover under the bed?
They'll shoot me for cowardice if I don't go. I know they will; they've done it to dozens of lads already. I wish I could spare you that, Dad. I wish I dared put this letter in the post so you'd at least hear my side of things. But it's a fifty-fifty chance I'll go to hell when they shoot me, and a hundred percent chance I'll be in hell if I go back. I'm not afraid to die; I just wish I didn't have to shame you as well. I hope some day you can forgive me.
I keep dreaming of an angel telling me I'm her hero. I wish I could believe it was true.
Tommy
Author:
aibhinnSummary: Tommy's final letter to his father.
Spoilers: 2x03, "To the Last Man"
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of war.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This is making me no money, and they're not my characters. I just enjoy playing with them.
Author's note: Written for round 1.10 of
writerinadrawer. Prompt: a letter. Required additional element: flag (as a noun or a verb).Letter found in the personal effects of Private Thomas Reginald Brockless, 10th West Yorkshire.
Dad,
I can write this to you because I know damn well that nobody will ever send it and nobody will ever read it. It'll be chucked in the bin and that will be that. But at least I'll have got it off my chest.
They want to send me back to the front. But I can't go, Dad. I don't expect you to understand why. Nobody can understand unless they've been there, and while I'm glad that old knee injury kept you out of uniform, it still means you can't really know what it's like.
That sounds like an excuse, doesn't it? It's not. There's no possible way to put into writing what it's like to be on the front lines of this war, but I'll try.
You live in a hole in the ground. A trench is nothing more than a rabbit warren dug into the dirt, reaching three or four feet above your head, open to the sky. It stretches for what seems like miles in either direction, and it becomes your whole world. The dirt's clay, so when it rains, none of it soaks into the soil; the water pools on the floor and turns the clay into a slick mess that sends you sliding all over the place. If you're a lucky bastard, you'll fall and break your leg so you can be sent back to heal up; mostly you just crash into the dirt walls and come away wet and filthy. But that's nothing new, because 'wet and filthy' is your way of life. You sleep in the mud and eat in the mud; every once in a while someone will rig a bit of tarpaulin to create a reasonably dry place for a few blokes to get together for a game of cards. Or if you're lucky, some officer will let you dry out a bit in his 'quarters' (not that it's anything much, just a room dug out of the mud and reinforced with planks) when the rains get too bad. So many poor sods with foot-rot because nobody can ever keep their feet dry; the mud is a thin slurry that soaks in through the seams of your boots and coats your feet in a slippery layer that feels like you're walking in blood.
Some never make it long enough to get rotted feet, though, when the commanders get the urge to send us up and over. With the Union Jack in the lead, we scream defiance as we charge over No-Man's-Land towards the German line. The machine guns come alive and no-one's immune, no-one; we fall like dominos in its path, officers and enlisted alike. I've tripped over fallen comrades, put my foot into my best mate's guts, watched men trying to stick their shot-off limbs back on or walk on a foot that's been shot to pulp. I've seen men whose faces were missing, with only the name on their uniforms to show who they were. If we're lucky, a third of us make it back. But the top brass don't give a monkey's arse. They just keep sending us over the top. "One last push and on to Berlin." Sometimes I wonder if any of them have ever set foot on a battlefield.
And the shelling! It never stops, never; constant pounding, constant noise, constant screams. Ours, theirs, it doesn't matter; we're all out there to die anyway. Think of the factory going at full blaat, right? The din that it makes? Now imagine that all day, all night, for months. It gets into your head, it fills your brain until you just want to scream, stop, for the love of God, for five minutes! But then you look around and all the other blokes are going on about their business, and so you squash the anger down and sit on it because it wouldn't do to let the others see you going mad.
And we do. We do go mad out there. Men break and scream and sob for their mothers. They try to climb out of the trenches just so the Huns will shoot them down. Sometimes they take a gun to their commanding officers. Sometimes they take a gun to themselves. I don't think there's a man there who hasn't stared at his Webley and wondered what it would be like to put a bullet through his head. Would you even hear the noise of the gun firing? Would you feel the pain? See the flash of light? Even if suicide is a sin, would you really be condemned to hell for trying to escape the never-ending war and the stupid commanders who send us over the top to get mowed down like so much wheat?
And if you were condemned to hell—would that be any worse?
They're eyeing me now, the nurses. They know that I'm nearly healed up and ready to be sent back. The officers know it, too; they make their rounds of the wards once a week, and one of them stopped at my bed today. He put his hand on my shoulder and said in that gung-ho way they have, "So, old man, ready to rejoin your unit and fight the good fight?"
I couldn't answer. How can I go back to that? How can I willingly walk back into that war, when the sound of a dropped bedpan is enough to send me diving for cover under the bed?
They'll shoot me for cowardice if I don't go. I know they will; they've done it to dozens of lads already. I wish I could spare you that, Dad. I wish I dared put this letter in the post so you'd at least hear my side of things. But it's a fifty-fifty chance I'll go to hell when they shoot me, and a hundred percent chance I'll be in hell if I go back. I'm not afraid to die; I just wish I didn't have to shame you as well. I hope some day you can forgive me.
I keep dreaming of an angel telling me I'm her hero. I wish I could believe it was true.
Tommy
