The iron taste rises to my mouth, simply by just sitting. I've gotten used to splatting my blood into the mud even if it isn't ideal.
However I'm not here alone.
This wet ground doesn't contain my fluids alone, but that of probably hundreds of people I've never seen before.
Praying for the gunfire to cease, only for myself to come back to biting at my fingernails as I pitifully curl up trying to fall asleep in the rain. I have this repetitive thought that'll be the last time I sleep tensed up, or at all.
I've grown numb to the whole idea of getting shot in my heart or stabbed to be mangled so severely only my dog tag is proof of my position as an ally. I look to the left, someone bleeding out with vomit all over them; Turn right and some man just got his head blown off.
My mouth is wide open, blood and spit dripping out while soot, soil and sweat flies in.
My body leaning against the wall of a carved path, with a battalion of people out for my blood no more than 100 yards behind me.
My rifle at my side, gas mask half out my bag, and my helmet lost. I can't feel the metal barrel when I touch it nor can I tell if my boots are soaked. The world is swaying and lifeless; Not a single green nor person to tell me that I'll be home soon.
The air is filled with ash and dirt and only the smells of gunpowder and rot are present. I'm scratched and punctured; No clean bandage can kiss the pain goodnight.
Deep down I know I'm not supposed to see my family once more. Even if I claim a seat on a boat back home, and I receive my honourable medals, there's no certainty that it'll be okay. They'd say I went crazy, just another man becoming psycho, they suppose.
I don't know if I have a place to call home anymore, maybe the once carefully structured bricks which enveloped me in warmth are a morgue with debris and rubble.
I'm struggling to keep my thigh steady. A medic scrambled to get a strangling tourniquet on my leg, but whatever's left of it is screaming signals to my brain.
The sky looks different from how I remember. I know it's not time for the moon to be up, but the gray above me says otherwise.
And I've been cut short of my daydream, with the relentless screaming of some foreign yet frighteningly recognisable tongue.
I hear the drop of a metallic object, small enough to be overlooked, but to me it's like a beloved; It'll give me the last bit of warmth I've been seeking for.