The scent of death
heavy in the night air.
Bullets fly overhead
the conclusion of another suicide pact.

My comrad lay next to me,
making a painful journey to Paradise.
His final home,
a hastily dug rut in the ground.
The burial would be done after the battle,
or by the rats.
The stench of tear gass,
another reminder of fallen comrads.
There’s an explosion in ‘No Man’s Land,’
A futal attempt to cross the Valley of Death.

A single hope
slowly wanders into my thoughts,
A relief from this pain.
It would leave my wife,
widowed and heart-broken.
It would leave my children,
fatherless and lonely.
Yet even now as I climb over the top,
it doesn’t seem so bad.
There is a rapid pop of a machine gun.
Death welcomes yet another weary soldier.