The Trench Dog

France
Somme
1916

Seventeenth birthday and he celebrated by eating two pieces of stale hard candy instead of one hidden in an oilskin pocket of his rucksack. Thank you God for letting me see this day even though you must be busy as f----. § In the infantry supposedly formed by one of the Royals for almost two years now. Beat the odds so far. Don’t bear to think about how the dice are being rolled. Rolled them himself way back when he run off the farm, nothing but dumb sheep and dumber chickens along with someone calling herself his mother who had whipped him like she did the plough horse – poor old Steady – and see what the tumble got you: stupid officers and stupider orders and no better off than you had been before. § But he obeyed the orders, managed not to run when he received the terrible fire, sent some back – who knows where just pull the godd--- trigger – and hurled only twice when he saw the first dead body, torn into quarters and the lowest piece hanging from branch stubs  of a ruined tree alongside a few rotting peaches. None of that fruit for him ever after. Lots of tin food: beans and peas, stews that would make a starving mule flinch, beans and soups, beans. Dried salt beef (maybe the mule) and hardtack. The rare pudding – where the hell had that come from? Lime juice to keep the remaining teeth in his head and tea, always tea, enough tea to put bees in his ears and make his hands shake. § In between, taught only what the officers want him to know. Nothing complicated, nothing smart – soon enough he would be dead, and education was useless to a corpse. What he learned was to march and salute, just so; instant obedience to orders and never mind why or what; no talking; how to clean and shoot and shoot and shoot the rifle issued, and how to dig holes for sleeping and for his scat and piss and for the dead. § He had been punished for mistakes, sometimes his, more often, not. He had been beaten because it pleased the man beating him. He never heard a word of praise. He bent his back and bowed his head, and stayed ever on the watch for the enemy. That meant the ones from the other country. But as the fighting continued he took to thinking it was anyone who threatened him and never mind which uniform which flag, it was whoever said the words called ‘orders’ and wouldn’t explain why, it was whoever kept treating him like a dog to be used any which way. Dogs bite, he thought as he worked the bolt and fired again and again, dogs bite and go for the throat—