A loud ringing sound echoed through Kurt's ears, the trench tilted underneath him and everything appeared to be moving around him. He coughed on the smoke and dust that the grenade had kicked up, his chest tightening as he breathed in the thick cloud of smoke around him. He could hear nothing but the ringing in his ears and see nothing except the neverending cloud of smoke.

Kurt reached down and felt his leg, pulling his hand away to see it coated in blood, his blood. He then felt the slow creeping feeling of intense pain spreading through his leg, up to his hip and through his chest. His skin felt like it was on fire, his entire left side burning to the point that Kurt thought he might faint from the shock of it all. He had received his wish. The one in a million wound he had been begging for months had fallen into his lap and it might just kill him.

Around him, the battle raged on. The British soldiers who had entered the trench so willingly, so freely, were now scrambling to get out. The man Kurt had been talking to, the one moments away from putting a bullet between his eyes, lay crumpled in a heap in the corner completely still. Kurt hauled himself back until he could feel the wall of the trench against his back. His breathing became ragged and the pain grew more intense with each passing second until he was waiting for the moment a stray bullet hit him to put him out of his misery.

"What are you doing here, Kurt? I told you to man Johannes' gun!" Wilhelm yelled, grabbing Kurt under the arms and dragging him back and around the corner of the trench so he was no longer in range of any stray bullets or fragments.

"I did man his gun, in a way," Kurt spluttered out. His mouth was full of dust and mud from the initial explosion and it felt like some of his teeth had come loose.

"You're so stupid going into this on your own! You could have been killed."

"Watch Johannes for me. I promised Marie I would look out for him."

"I will, you know that. Now stay here, the medics will get you fixed up and you'll be back home in no time, that's a promise."

"Home. I finally get to go home."

"Of course you do. You did well, Kurt."

Wilhelm placed a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave it a light squeeze before turning around and returning to the battle from where he had just come from. Kurt slumped against the trench wall, the thin trace of a smile on his lips at the thought of returning home and never having to step foot in a trench again. For him, the war was over and he couldn't wait.

Still, as he sat in that trench, growing used to the pain in his leg as he waited for the medics to arrive and stretcher him away, Kurt couldn't help but think of that soldier's family. His Mother, Father, siblings, at home and waiting for him to either walk through that door or for the dreaded letter to arrive telling them he had been killed in the line of fire. Killed because he had stopped and taken a second to talk to the man who had killed his best friends and then saved his life. If he had just shot Kurt, perhaps both of them would have been able to go home.

He might not have thrown the grenade and pulled the trigger, but Kurt felt responsible for what had happened to the soldier. If had just fired his own gun, even if not to kill someone, they would have fired back and managed to move down through the trench before the rest of the Regiment even made it up the trench. Another man dead at his hands and he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger.

Kurt thought back to the conversation he had had with the man moments before the grenade had exploded. The soldier had mentioned two men for whom he held Kurt responsible. One, Tommy, had to have been the man he shot in that first battle, the one he had taken the disc and photographs from. The other, Kurt didn't know of. Whether his death had been caused by the death of Tommy, Kurt didn't know, but he wished he knew the name of this third man. He wanted to know the names of all those who he had killed in this war.

"What happened to you?" Otto, one of the medics asked.

"Grenade. Wrong place, wrong time."

"This just might be your ticket home, Kurt." Otto knelt beside him and looked down at the wound on his lower body, a wound Kurt refused to look at. "We need to get you moved further back. Someone could throw a grenade too far. Can you walk?"

"I haven't tried."

"Come on, you'll have to work with me."

Otto grabbed Kurt by the armpit and lifted him up, Kurt biting down on his bottom lip to keep from crying out as pain travelled up and down his left side. He glanced down for a fleeting second to his left side, seeing the blood that coated his trousers and boots and the torn clothing. The flesh underneath his trousers was torn and mangled, but his leg looked to still be attached to the rest of him. It was bad, but it could have been worse.

Even with the pain, Kurt managed to walk down the trench where a few men remained manning rifles and machine guns trained on the British trench to ensure they didn't try another assault. When they reached a safer spot further down the trench, Otto lowered Kurt to the ground and pulled a bandage out of his pack which he wrapped around Kurt's leg to try and stem the blood flow a little until they could get him to a decent aid station and then evacuated back home.

"This is definitely the end of your war, Kurt," Otto said.

"But at what cost?" Kurt muttered.

~~~

First Published - February 28th, 2021