Author: Eva McFarlane.

Like toy soldiers, we are thrust into battle. The ground underfoot is hard and cold, littered with the broken remains of my fellow soldiers; I shiver at the realisation that such an end could have been my own… it still could be.

“Turner!” I flinch at my name being called.

It is Officer Mayfair. His wide, enraged eyes are all that distinguishes him amid the ash that covers his face. Within his watery blue leer, I feel myself drowning in my own anxiety as I know what the order is before it barks out his mouth.

“Yes sir?” I reply, my hunched shoulders rising to attention, poking out against my uniform like razor blades.

“Group C is up next. You are in group C, are you not, Turner?”

“I— I am sir. Yes.” I stutter the words out, preparing for the horrors up the ridge.

“Well,” he begins, his voice low, not quite a whisper, more a growl. “What are you standing around for? Get moving!”

I offer a shaking palm out salute which only causes his face to darken. I feel my heart beating in time with my racing feet as I soon tumble past men braver than I. Amid the shouting of men growing evermore depraved, the clanging of machines, and the echoing of bullets firing out, it is as though I can feel my sanity draining as I join group C like a defenceless lamb being readied for the slaughter.

“Where the hell were you, Turner?” One man, Stanley asks. “Oh, hiding again, were we?”

I shoot him a look of annoyance, though not a sound passes my lips.

The band of hardened men with a thirst for war circle their gaze around me, chuckling at my meek demeanour. I do not look their way; my gaze remains straight ahead as I await in trembling terror for the signal to strike out in its shrill deafening tune.

My feet move on autopilot, performing a timeless dance before my mind can begin to grasp that I am already racing into battle. We charge into open terrain where only unjustly reaped death hangs in wait to claim more men.

I stumble, launching down onto hard, deadened soil where the only moisture comes from the gore of battle. “Turner!” My name is called, beckoning me to rise back up into this carved piece of hell. “Turner!” It calls again, but I now belong to the ground.

“No!” I reply, pleading to be left alone, fearing to gaze at another darkened sky in which battle lies beneath.

“Turner…” I am rocking back and forth in my protest. “Mr Turner, you are safe.” That word hits me like an iron-clad fist, for surely in such a world as this ‘safe’ bears no truth.

Looking up, a woman with wisps of grey edging out across her dirty blonde hair analyses me with a warming smile.

“Liar!” I shout in reply, watching as her once porcelain flesh becomes littered with bullet holes and dried blood. I jump back in terror only to find an uncomfortably tight force pulling me down. Instantaneously, more figures in clinical attire rush over.

I howl out inaudible cries as again, “Turner! Turned! Turner!” is shouted back at me in a mingle of inaudible voices.

“You are in group C, are you not, Turner?”

Again, the horrors of the Great War unfurl, drawing me back in.

As doctors and nurses fight to sedate me in my mind’s tug of war against insanity, Officer Mayfair stands before me once again as the rapid sounds of gunfire and dying men signal my flight from reality.

In the horrors of battle, my own piece of hell was carved, there is no escaping, there is no forgetting…