One Thousand Tears

The rains have come again, and the ground has turned to mud. The muck is so thick in some parts that it can stop an artillery shell. Our position was around one hundred miles southwest of Griffonstone. This war has devastated the land. With my eyes, I saw how this land looked like at peace and how war has made it so ugly and disfigured.

Not only does it disfigure the lands, but also the griffons fighting for it. I secretly enlisted into the royalist forces when I was sixteen and remember the first time we took a position from the enemy. The problem is with civil wars is it is very difficult to tell who is friend and who is foe. You have to learn not to trust anyone with a different uniform.

I had my rifle with a fixed bayonet that the chest of a Gilda Clique soldier. He looked so young, a little older than me and he had his bayonet at my chest as well. Neither was us were making a move, until a commanding officer came by and saw us. She took away my rifle, and handed me the enemy soldier's weapon. I saw him pleading for his life.

He held his talons up to surrender, but his words fell on deaf ears as my officer run him through with a bayonet. It was then that my young eyes saw the savagery of the war, but it was only a taste of what was to come. It has been four years since then, and still I remember his brown eyes looking at me and when they closed at the end of his life.

Night after night and day after day, the shelling never ceased. We are the dead, and it maybe on these fields that we will be buried. These lands used to be fertile farmland, and it will be us that may bring the next coming of spring. My soldiers covered their heads, and screamed as the land was hammered by artillery. It rained earth and shrapnel.

I saw my cousin Gabby holding and comforting a young griffon in her arms named Gretchen. The glasses-wearing griffon closed her eyes with all her strength and screamed at the top of her lungs as the ground shook and exploded from heavy shelling. Her screams longed for all this suffering and pain to cease. I know we all wish for that in the end.

I lightly tapped Lieutenant Von Lowe on the shoulder as the shelling stopped. She was at the helm of a machine gun, and I knew she could that position. Von Lowe smiled, and gestured for me to leave the position and went to see my cousin, and the young soldier with her. There is nowhere to hide other than in our foxholes filled with rainwater.

The bodies of our dead were slumped over barbed wire and facedown in the mud. I suspected there is an enemy position ahead of us. A spray of machine gun bullets that almost hit me proved me right, "I did a flyby of the position, it's about one hundred yards ahead of us, I would say around 2,000 rifles with machine gun support," said Gabby,

"We attack in two minutes, I need for you two to stay with me, alright?" I said to them, "your name is Gretchen, eh Zöpfe (pigtails)?" I asked, the light blue griffon nodded, she looked no different than me when I joined the army, "stay with me? alright? you stay with me and stay with Gabby, and we will all see to the end of this fight," I vowed.

I signaled to Lieutenant Von Lowe that we had two minutes until the attack. I peered over the foxhole, and saw the bayonets of the enemy coming from the position. We have no artillery support, and no heavy weapons. The only thing we had were our rifles and machine guns to support us. I nodded to Gabby to tell her it was time, "Fix bayonets!"

"Fix bayonets!" Von Lowe called out and the order circulated to the soldiers. I saw a Gilda Clique soldier peering out from behind a rock twenty yards from my position. It was a scout. My eyes met hers, and in my mind that was to be my first target. Thousands of M1895 bayonets were fixed to rifles. I saw a look in Gretchen's eyes, a look of trust.

Machine gunners pulled back the receivers. The scout was about to alert his comrade. I took my chance, and came up from my shell hole and started shooting. Two bullets hit him in the chest, and a third hit the griffon behind him in the head. Amid the raining artillery shells, we came out of our holes and charged the field to attack the enemy trench

The machine guns rattled off and provided fire support, and moved in behind us. Crossfire grinded the ground, and Gabby and Gretchen charged at my side with loud and proud battle-cries. We broke through the first line, shooting and running our bayonets into the flesh of the enemy. A few fell to the crossfire. No one ever said this was easy.

I looked back and heard a splash. I saw a body fell facedown in a shell hole filled to the brim with rainwater. Gretchen was proving herself a soldier, and stabbed an enemy before he could radio for reinforcements. The machine guns did what they could to soften the lines, and we broke through smacking aside the enemy with rifle stocks and will.

The last obstacle was up the hill, but was to be the toughest. I knew going into this battle that casualties will be high. I had to accept it, "Get down! Get on the ground!" I called out, but my order did not reach everyone. A machine gun nest mowed down my valiant troops, but Gabby and Gretchen followed my order with a handful of others.

Crossfire hit the stone of a fence that we used for cover. It made me think there used to be a farm here before the war. One of my captains was trying to move a squad from one end of the field to the other, but one shell fell too many, and took her head clean off. Gretchen tried to peek her head up, but Gabby stopped her, "Keep you head down!"

Among them was my second-in-command with her pistol, "Go! Go! Go!" She belted the handful as we moved to the take the last stronghold in the area. We managed to take the positions, but it came with a price. The fields and hill were covered in the dead. Bullet and shrapnel wounds reflected the carnage of the battle in a field now dark and red.

The cries of the wounded filled the air on both sides as the field medics did what they could to treat them. Some were beyond saving from either physical damage or damage to the mind. Everybody goes through very difficult times in their lives, and they complain that their life is hell. Let me be the first to say this to you. You know nothing of hell.