Four years of dying/Vier Jahre des Sterbens
I am wounded and others are shot. Me and the other soldiers are crawling around in the wet mud coughing the whole time, we hate it. Lying next to dead people and breathing in urine, I want to go home.
I start to run but one of the turks notice me I have to go back to safety, but something is stopping me. Can’t I just leave all of this behind, the shells, the flairs and the bitter taste of death. None of us walk away unharmed.
They can’t see where they are going, some are going to the left and some are going to the right, the soldiers around me are falling tripping over their laces and falling to the ground, they all look drunk.
They fall and break, the time is running out. People are lying on the floor eyes wide and are covered in blood. We are torn, our clothes, shoes and courage. We have no family and we miss them let’s just go back.
“Gas gas, emergency put your masks on and stay calm. They have gassed us get up wake up put your masks on!”
We are exhausted, exasperated even. We struggle to get the mask on. We all manage except for one. He lost his kit, it is gone and he is panicking the others are still awkwardly putting them on they were desperately ignoring the man. I did not know him but I felt dreadful, I want to make sure I got home for my family, “I am sorry.” I said
It is hard too see now the gas is thick and heavy, we pick the suffering man up and put him in the wagon. It’s getting hard to breath we run as far as we can from the pea green color of the clouds behind, It’s almost like it is chasing us.
I will never forget him, the conrad, the chief, the leader. He was running towards me, tears running down his face. He was coughing and I felt hopeless, he was dying and I knew it, there was nothing I could do.
Can you imagine it, death before your eyes seeing your someone shaking, withering dying while you are holding him. Well let me tell you it is not fun. He had dark brown hair and a big nose in the centre of his face, he was too heavy to carry so I had to pushed him in a wagon. There was blood a lot and it was not fun for either of us. People were watching. He was traumatized scared to death literally. I could not help but try not to look. He was dead.
I not far behind him. The man in the wagon he was coughing, spluttering but only it was not just mucus it was blood and mucus, blood pouring out of his mouth as he was trembling beyond belief almost falling out of the wagon. The others did not care that just carried on, I think I was the only one that cared that a man in front of me was dying.
If you have heard seen and experienced death if you have been through years of what I have been through if you have any idea what it is like, then you would agree that dying for your country is not glorious.
It is not brave or noble it is just dying for right, right for something that is really not worth taking your life from you. Don’t die for others wait till you can die for your self, that is in a way that is simple, in a way you can just say I died.
By Anja
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