Attrition

Attrition

I. Battlefield

Abject silence was the tormenting anxiety,

as stillness ripples its way through the ravaged square.

A cold morning horizon haunts the sullied earth,

And between heaven and hell we fight for stairs.

 

In the void the rumble of panzer monoliths,

Their churn of hardened steel quells the injured loam.

The sun apexes and bursts through the shattered glass

The clambers of artillery motes surround our home.

 

The passive backscatter dancing betwixt the rays

was subverted only by the hint of rotting meat.

The remains of forgotten soldiers lying lifeless,

Their dog-tags unspoken for, their souls freed by defeat.

 

How empty and melancholic the battlegrounds,

With platoons trespassing upon the ghosts of war,

Marching a mile in another warrior’s trails,

as a cog in the machine of conflict restored.

 

A someone to no one, and a no one to someone,

We fought side-by-side, with the sunset reserved to allay.

And to the scrolls of fate, we cursed and swore in hate,

How deep the wounds of war had bested us each day

 

In the corner of town, in a rundown bunker,

Amidst the heaping piles of tobacco and ash

We knelt in silence, each soldier gasping for breath,

Then back we went to playing cards for smokes and cash

 

The whole squad prayed to a God they will never meet,

at least not on this field. For days we’d stand in blood spilt,

toying with the toils of superfluous factions,

inhaling the micro-splinters of wreckage and silt.

 

With gravity weighing heavily on our chests,

We’d feel the thunder encroaching to our hideout

The broken granites from beneath our feet had leapt,

And the smell of sulfur and residue left no doubt.

 

Then in the distance, coursing through the char soaked sky,

Swathing the night, a horde of German bombers attack

Each fighter donning the perverted Iron Cross,

each fuselage firing shells, ripping asunder their tracks.

 

They came through the chalcedony jacket of night,

The pre-arranged ambuscade proved once again their wit.

We hunkered down and held on tight, swearing at each jet,

Blaspheming in capricious tongues and holy shits!!

 

In screams we cursed these colossal automatons

All and sundry clenching to their chests to find their faiths

As shrapnel ripped our sergeant’s sturdy frame apart,

the silence vanished, and in our hole we stood in wait.

 

The caked on blood that was wedged inside my cheekbone,

The taste had taken on a different mournful zest.

The flavors were more metallic and smoky,

My lips were also parched from the flecks of dust abreast.

 

It’s funny how war can amalgamate a person,

Can turn hearts to dust caverns of apathy,

To black-holes, devoid of anything they once were,

to endorsing the backers of the war canopy.

 

The darkness was spreading, and though we were resolute,

Even the brightest gleam off the helmet of the sun,

can cast the largest shadows. Or cast the sun away,

strangled by strafe and flak from bombers to tank guns.

 

The war was real. The confusion it caused was real.

Moments, seconds, hours all passed in the same timeframe.

And life as thought engulfed in calamity, moved on,

And we were her last defense, soldiers with no names.

 

At nightfall the attempted massacre commenced.

Awe-stricken like caught sheep, we searched for intruders,

Insecure now, and afraid, we uncovered none,

We found nothing, no bullets, no movement, no shooters.

 

Just nothing; upon my feet were prideful soldiers,

Brothers and sisters sprawled atop the muck and dirt

With their blood surfacing from their extremities,

All I could do was hurt; all anyone could do was hurt.

 

And in the loathsome haze, if you listened real close,

You could hear their souls forsaking this ungodly world.

We found ourselves screaming at them, remembering their names,

holding their lifeless form, and slowly our minds unfurled.

 

It was so quick; we were being slaughtered in the dark,

But then rapidly the quietude died away.

The only thing I could hear was my thumping heart,

its beat pounding stridently in my head today.

 

The screams of embattled men muddled in background noise,

my hyper senses finding grace in overload,

the shells of humanity wandering in barren homes

waiting for the ground beneath them to soon explode.

 

Projectile dirt and slivers of metallic grade,

Were hurtled about inside our hidden pillbox,

The whirr of molten piercing steel, grazing earlobes,

Was second behind the thud of death a bullet stocks.

 

Of all things broken, our supply lines were severed,

abandoned by frightened generals in three piece suits.

Beleaguered by lack of nutrition and enfeebled,

Everything was pain, and every thought irresolute.

 

Even the best laid plans were inconsequential now.

Along with bullets at night, the shadows come alive

Crawling up your skin infecting your faculties,

touching that final nerve that helped you to survive.

 

This was war; living is what we were dying for.

It was time to separate the men from the boys.

I reached for my symbol of hope, my gold plated cross,

My other index finger on the trigger poised.

 

I took a moment, nodding up, accepting my fate,

imploring God to care for my line when I’m amiss.

Scared, you could say, I sucked the air right from the earth,

Then I put that cross to my arid lips and kissed

 

In that microsecond the adrenaline had spiked—

Like a race car driver ramming the gas to the floor.

The fields were a capacious mess bedraggled with souls,

Empty skin-bags held to war’s imprisonment no more.

 

Strike the irons, charge the guns, volley and thunder away,

Behold the evil in one man’s heart, the unbeaten way

The path drawn out by the devil’s art, the evil way,

The provision of a sickly soul left on display.

 

My handprints branded onto the rifle’s barrel

My finger like an artery to the trigger

Empowered and confused, I sprang into battle,

In the background, the cannon blasts were like whickers.

 

My combat boots squelched amidst the plasma and sludge

Stepping on bodies, my gun, my arm, my trigger warm,

The two elements combining for a putrid whiff,

But in the war machine my body, my soul conformed.

 

My nose like a bloodhound with German kraut as scent,

I traversed through the labyrinthine maze of bones

Sometimes twisting my ankle on severed femurs,

sliding across spilled intestines and more unknowns.

 

The hollow sounds of recently spent mortar shells

Echoed on every wall, the deafening began.

As gradually rationality would elude me,

My war-worn heart commenced its own war of attrition.