the following is transcripted from a journal of letters belonging to an unidentified American soldier, who sadly perished in the final days of World War I. A bullet hole obsures the top right corner, where the letter dates likely were.
ma-
how are you? none of us are well. we were stuck, and now we who were left are lost, unmired to fog and yet unreleased from the cling that held us down. the horses were swallowed for our escape, ma, the rain poured down while their powerful legs snapped like toothpicks, spilling tendons to free our tanks. they panicked, thrashed by a thread, and left marks where they went down. we left our tanks behind, and our boots, and the mud that blossomed red like a cranberry bog suffocated mid-harvest. deeper than all in the pitch storm and shallowest, with a soaring ribcage for a riverbed. we lived in a river, those of us who lived, and the "water" was greedy.
ma, isn't water supposed to be something pure and purifying? something that doesn't ask. and the earth was meant to be the same, ungreedy... i watched that first horse drown in solid ground like a waking dream. the shelling turned the earth into a terrifying myth we made. the machine guns, the tanks, the flamethrowers... those horribly efficent trench-guns. the mud. do you see? hell wasn't enough. they flooded the land with shells and so the rains came and made it all a starving soup, hungry for young stock to make bones. there are no souls or ships to save, there is no aid to give or mail from home. there is barely a face for a smile. george and his tin of baseball cards he can't bear to pop! open now. martin keeps lighting matches for warmth. we havent even had hot water for his poor fingers, so he singes them to feel. benny and his ghost stories-i'm not sure if he or the pyromaniac are coping better.
but i couldn't stand to singe these nice mittens. so i listened one night, a beautiful night where the rain destroyed itself into a fine mist and we could start a fire larger than a teaspoon. benny looked me in the eye and said "the skullface is gonna get you." we'd spoken, i don't know, suppose ten words before this moment. "beans?" (and a proffered tin) and a "no, thanks" from him, even in the direst mud. george couldn't speak since the second shelling covered him in a pink mist that would never wash out. and martin snapped at me to let him die any time he wasnt't burning his fingers down to nubs with a matchstick. if it weren't for benny, i can't imagine much humanity left in these meaningless letters that will sink in the mud—so he saved my life, what's left of it, for me. it would be the least i could do, to give him a chance.
note (04 Feb 2025) i'll upload more of this journal when i get the chance. it was in surprisingly good shape other than the bullet hole. have any of y'all heard of a guy called "skullface" ? i'd love to know what you may have read or heard. just leave it in the address book and please list your source (including isbn number if applicable.) thank you, and watch this space !