World War One, the war to end all wars. Don't we all wish that that had been the case?
But it wasn't. Many wars have been fought since then. But none have been so fierce, none have been so frought with danger, degradation, and human bravery.
Imagine sitting in the mud, among the detrious of human living, in the bottom of a trench hundreds of yards long. Living with the rats that feed on your dead countrymen laying just yards
away. Listening to their scurrying around in the dark while you try to sleep. Scrathing, always scratching because of the lice that infest every living thing in the trench. Sitting with hundreds of other unwashed, scared humans waiting to scale the walls of the trench and charge through hundreds of feet of bare exposed ground and clinging barbed wire. Ground that has been denuded my thousands of rounds of small arms fire and artillery bombardment.
Imagine the fear of the men that did this during the attack on Vimy Ridge. Charging ahead, you can hear the zip and whir, the whine of bullets just missing you, the richochet of bullets and shrapnel all around you. The screams, the screams you hear from far and near. The screams you hear from yourself as you charge on. Men, your friends and comrades on both the right and left, drop without a sound to the ground and lay still. Some explode in a red mist of blood and gore, some lose body parts as you watch. But you charge on, gasping for breath, hoping your death comes fast and painless.
You near the enemy trench and there are not near as many of you as there were when you started, but you press on firing your weapon as you charge at the forms in the trench. You don't
even think of them as people, you see them as weapons firing, firing, firing. You point and shoot, and then charge on, pointing, firing. When you realize that there are no more trench and no more forms you stop and just stand. You can hear sporadic firing behind you, you turn and find that you've broken through, you've survived. The ridge has been taken and you've lived through the hell that was Vimy Ridge. But it's not over, the war goes on and there are other trenches to live
and die in. Other walls to scale and more fear to overcome. But it will be done.
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