He exhaled and his breath turned to vapor. As he gained a sense of himself he realized he was cold and wet. He turned his eyes to the sky and could see the rain falling.
He tried to turn over onto his side but found that he was impaled in deep mud that impeded his movement. It was like being stuck to a piece of fly paper. Instead, he settled with turning his head to discover he was lying face-to-face with a man – a boy really – who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. The young man’s stomach had been ripped to shreds by gunfire and his burnt intestines lay on the ground in front of him. The dead man’s hands lay frozen on his abdomen: his last act in life was to try to push his organs back inside of him.
Vincent could feel the vomit burning the back of his throat. He fought it off for as long as he could. He was able to turn away from the dead body but at the moment he faced the other direction, he retched until his stomach hurt.
When he finally stopped, he opened his tear-blurry eyes and expected that it had been only a dream. But his opened eyes showed him that he was still in same place, in the same position. The mud was just as thick as it had been before. The sounds around him, if anything, seemed more intense. The rain above him was illuminated by the constant exchange of propelled explosives.
Vincent looked around and fully took in his surroundings. He was still not sure where he was or how he came to be there. Only moments before, he had been standing in front of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium.
His great-grandfather had been among the unknown buried after the Battle of Passchendaele, whom the memorial honored. He was not one hundred percent sure that his great-grandfather had died there but was at least ninety five percent sure. He had spent years doing the research and all of it led to his great-grandfather having fought in the Second Battle of Passchendaele with the British 5th Army. All of the unclassified field reports indicated that his great-grandfather was among those killed in action during the sixteen day battle, although a body was never officially recovered.
On the flight to Belgium he had read an account of the five month battle for the village of Passchendaele. The Entente forces of Britain, France and Russia attacked the Imperial German Army in July 1917. The objectives of the attack were to wear down the enemy, secure the Belgian coast and connect with the Dutch frontier. A hope of the attack was that it would lessen the pounding the French were taking in the Aisne. The moral there was low and there were many French deserters as a result. By causing the Germans to reassign troops to Passchendaele, there was optimism that the French army could reorganize.
The Battle of Passchendaele consisted of several battles over a period of many months and was finally won by the Allied forces in November as the Canadian Corps joined the fight and took Passchendaele. The battle itself was fought in the land between Dixmude and the Lys River: an area filled with streams and drainage ditches. The area, with the heavy rains, became a swamp with deep mud. The mud caused tanks to become entrenched and unable to move. Men and horses drowned in the mire.
The battle saw the death of 300,000 British soldiers and 200,000 German soldiers. A note of interest on the battle was that a young Adolf Hitler had fought in the Battle of Passchendaele as a member of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division.
The book Vincent had read during the flight showed several photographs of the battle, including a before-and-after aerial photo of the village of Passchendaele. The entire village, every building and structure, was destroyed during the battle leaving the village in complete rubble.
The photos flashed in his mind as he looked at the bleak landscape – the same mud, the same rain, the same tanks caught by the swampy terrain. It wasn’t possible and although he wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t dreaming, the land described in the book and the land before him were identical. He had come to Belgium to learn more of the battle that took the life of his great-grandfather and now, somehow, found himself experiencing that same battle.
As if someone thought he needed further convincing, he felt a hard kick to his ribs as a man tripped over his abdomen and fell in the mud next to him. The man did not rise. After several minutes of clawing through the mud, Vincent was able to make his way to the man. The mud could not disguise the hole from the bullet that had ripped through the man’s throat.
Then, another explosion came right next to him. He felt something strike his head and he knew nothing else.
He woke and discovered it was dark and everything was quiet. Vincent realized he must have blacked out again. I feel like an NFL quarterback. He groaned and clutched his head. At least I’m awake. What an awful dream.
He prepared to roll out of bed but realized he was stuck. He turned his head and saw that the soldier he dreamed had kicked him in the ribs was still there.
The weather, which had been cold before, was now below freezing. Vincent looked down at himself and saw that he was in a British uniform. The uniform was wool and he was somewhat warm but without a coat, lying in the wet mud, he would soon become hypothermic.
He turned his head to the right and in the distance through the field of bodies he saw the lines and armaments of one of the forces of the
