soldiers get edgy sometimes

soldiers get edgy sometimes

fiction
edward w pritchard


We were about a quarter mile from the front over there in France on a dark rainy evening on the second floor of a bombed out old chateau with no food, no blankets and the sound of the huge guns twenty miles off meticulously destroying one picturesque French town at a time.

As he jumped to his feet Williams startled me from my revelry with his cursing as he jammed the heavy wooden butt of his rifle through bedroom wall knocking a twelve inch hole below the pictures of the small family.

Next morning just before dawn Edwards and William's whispering interrupted my dreams of the French girls standing along the river as we marched along the other night just before wire patrol.

Cracking one eye open I watched Edwards mixing muddy water, sticks and dirt in his helmet with his bayonet as he taught Williams how to repair a blemish in the wall of an old chateau.