A red breasted robin perched on a branch singing happily to the wind, and anything that would listen. Movement in its vision silence the soothing song. An old man, stumbled into a pile of dry leaves, falling to one knee, grumbling loudly as he fumbled with a map with dirty hands. Getting to his feet, his clean and pressed trousers, now muddy at the knee, and creased. Pulling out a small pocket compass he lined it up to the map, looked around, with sad puffy eyes as he began to recognise a bit here, and a bit there. That’s when saw the clearing. Inside the dense forest, a seemingly random opening dawned. Only the men of the 77th U.S. Division would know the truth of this opening. Only they could have survive it.
The old man found the old smooth stumps of the old trees that used to populate the opening, smoothed with age, not like he remembered them, But not just any stump caught his watery blue eye, He was there for a specific stump. Steadily he checked them, one by one, he stepped over the fallen piles of crispy leaves, that often felled him, and found The Stump. He knew it was the one, because the glisten of metal embedded inside its bark shined through the haze of the warm day. He steadied himself on The Stump, and took a knee to run his wrinkled finger over the small piece of rounded long and thin metal. Looking up, the haze turned to smoke that carried the smell of burnt wood and soil. A near by explosion rattled his nerves as the force tore a tree from its root, and brought it down. Two men ran from behind him, rifles pointing ahead, into the smoke, bayonets ready. Their uniform was olive in colour, speckled in mud, their doughboy helmets strapped on tight, bobbing as they ran. More men ran up through the clearing, that now supported many living trees, Gun fire echoed from the other side of the burning smoke, quickly followed by the thudding, snaps and cracks of the flying bullets, being hurled through the air in the direction of the U.S. 77th Division soldiers.
The man who had come level with the old man suddenly let out a cry and fell limp, his olive uniform, speckled with mud, now supported a flow of crimson. Cries of pain and anguish echoed through the trees, more of the tall trees had fallen now from small explosions from grenades, or the impact of the bullets had torn chunks out of the wooden cover. The old man found in his hand, a revolver, and his hand was no longer wrinkled. He remained knelt by the fresh splintered stump, watching the slaughter as the olive figures fell, one after the other. He dared a glance over the fallen tree bark and saw the figures dressed in dark grey advancing through the screen of smoke, muzzle flashes erupting from their raised rifles. “Dad?” came a distant echo of a voice. An explosion shook the ground, closer than the others had yet been, as the old man showed the flowering fire ball his attention he saw a body flying through the air in his direction. A boy, no more than sixteen years old, smashed into the old man, knocking him on his back. Finding his feet, and his breath, he looked upon the boys bloody face. The boy, Gasping for breath, eyes searching for a reason for the violence that had ripped him from his warm hearth and family, his words hindered by the blood accumulating inside his mouth, making him splutter. “How can I help? Tell me what to do. Let me fix you!” cried the old man, tears streaming from his forever watery blue eyes. The Boy spasm and cried for his mother, and then fell silent. “Dad?” came the distant voice of a younger man again, closer.
The Boy lay lifeless as the old man removed the metal chain around the boys neck, taking the spare dog-tag from the chain with the boys name “Be at peace, Tyrone.” said the old man reading the dog-tag, before he hammered the it into the bark of the tree. “Dad! There you are!” a man in waterproof walking overalls, increased his speed as he found his father kneeling by a smooth tree stump weeping, “what’s with the stump dad? Are you OK?” asked the younger man with concern clear in his voice and expression, The old man looked up at his son, and gave a weak smile. “Oh, just memories, Tyrone. Just memories.” Tyrone helped his father up, and brushed off his knee’s, and they began their walk back to the 77th U.S. Division Memorial Road of the Argonne Forest Trail. As they headed further away from the smooth stumps, the red breasted robin glided down to the metal dog-tag embedded into the broken wood, considered the small piece of metal for a moment, and began its song once more, as if The Great War never happened.
lukkasimaginarium 