Dig for Victory

They say that the enemy have machines that can dig graves, massive vehicles with giant metalic claws that can shift tons of earth in no time. According to Kipper they can bury an entire platoon in less than 15 minutes.

Poor Kipper. He didn’t make it. He’s one of the ones we’re burying today. No machines for us, hard arm-bursting, back-breaking work, up to our armpits in mud, slime and the dead, with bombs and bullets roaring and raging all around us.

As I dig I see Archie topple over into the hole he has just dug, victim of a stray bullet. A few of my colleagues laugh at this example of self-burial, but when one of them is also hit, and he too falls into the hole he has just dug, the rest become strangely silent.  

The Major comes by to assess progress. He is angry that the number of unburied dead has actually increased since he was last here. A few soldiers point out that standing on open ground digging graves is an insane waste of lives. I plead with him to cease the burials, but he barks back that “We’re not animals, we bury our dead,” and threatens me with court martial. Another soldier asks him to at least wait until nightfall, and the Major shoots him in the head. He then turns and shoots the man standing next to me, for no apparent reason. I hastily begin digging graves for the newly fallen, in doing so probably saving my own life.

The Major is killed shortly afterwards, in the barrage of rocket attacks that besiege us. The burial squad is totally exposed to attack, only the dead are sheltered, and we envy them and join them within minutes. Except that I don’t. Somehow I survive, though all around me is mayhem and bloody slaughter. When the rockets subside and a sort of peace descends, I count the survivors. Once, twice, three times, and every time it is just me.

I cannot dig this many graves, not in a thousand lifetimes, but reinforcements arrive, a new platoon, straight from the training ground. Some of the men laugh at what they suppose is their good fortune. “I’d rather be digging graves than fighting,” one says, but the relative still that followed the recent barrage soon ends, and the bullets and rockets eat into the numbers and bodies of the new recruits, who soon realise that the safe, warm war of the trenches is preferable to the bitter, exposed chill of the burial squad.

A new bombardment. Instinctively I fall to the ground, as a rocket lands nearby. The new recruits, innocent of the sound of approaching death, fail to fall. Bits of warm bodies grace the air around me. In just ten minutes the entire new army is wiped out.

Once again I count up the list of survivors. Once, twice, three times. Just me. Just me. Just me.

So many dead. I dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. Days pass, maybe weeks. I have no way of knowing, in my haze and in the fog of constant onslaught I have lost the ability to distinguish day from night. Several times I pass out, coming to in a grave I have just dug.

I pray for reinforcements. I pray for water. I pray for food. I pray for an end to the war. I pray for a cup of tea in the finest bone china. But nobody arrives.

Perhaps everyone is dead.

Maybe I’m the last one alive. 

Not for long though, surely. I have defied the odds for far too many times. I must die soon, it is beyond doubt. Until then, I must dig.

The worst thing is that there is nobody left alive to bury me.