Prussian soil 1/3

Lingering thoughts of home were accompanied a shy light that danced within a sea of shades on the bunker wall. The sun had not yet given up on the day as it came closer to its last efforts. Efforts that seemed to be wasted on a cold, somber day of 1915. Winter had been bleak, and no snow was insight. Only the winds from the east that rushed across the wet planes and meadows of the lands south of the Baltic Sea. Lands that armies bled and died for but no one really owned after all. Now, a stare above the trench was too dangerous to risk yet worth every ounce of blood it would cost. There, far out beyond nomansland, behind the vicious and frightened enemy, the sun fell towards the dark, green trees. Orange and red had their final dance while the light began to fade, falling through the pines. Now, it was no time to mourn the passing of the sun, as the night promised relief from the shells. The regiment had dug deep and fierce. Proving the worth of their arms and hands against the relentless Prussian soil underneath them. A soil now tilted with blood and sweat. Gefreiter Sonnberg leaned against the trench wall while lighting a cigarette with his steady hands. The smoke escaped from his pale lips under his moustache and fled into the cold air of the night. “I regret the day we dug this trench”, he said with a bright voice. “Why?”, Officer von Thalsend asked as he accepted the cigarette of his subordinate for the first time since they met and as the first officer Gefreiter Sonnberg had seen doing it. “We could have added a little comfort to it”. Von Thalsend laughed quietly. “A comfort we can’t afford. We ought to move East as fast as possible. Push back the Tsar”. “Of course, of course”, Sonnberg said with a little surprise and astonishment in his voice. He had not expected an officer to laugh about his joke. A humor he nonetheless tried to share as often as he could. “We will soon bath in the icy waters of Petrograd and finally get this soil and dirt out of our uniforms. You, me, and the whole company entrenched here”. Von Thalsend stood up from the wooden barrel he sat on to reach for the cross he wore around his neck. A now dull silver cross of slender form. It carried red stains on its metal skin. “That day, the day we take Petrograd, that day I will wash this cross with the water of the canals. I won’t clean it before. No water will touch it”. Sonnberg looked at his commanding officer with interest and confusion. With his cigarette he pointed at the cross and asked politely: “Sir, is this your blood on it?”. Von Thalsend looked at the young boy with his blue eyes and said: “No, I fear not”.