When the Great War began in 1914, it sounded temporary, almost manageable. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, alliances snapped into place, and Europe lurched toward catastrophe. For three years, America watched from across the Atlantic, selling supplies and convincing itself that distance meant safety.
That illusion ended in April 1917.
President Woodrow Wilson signed the declaration of war. Newspapers screamed of honor and democracy. Posters bloomed on brick walls — Uncle Sam pointing a stern finger. Young men lined up everywhere, convinced they were stepping into legend.
Frank Parsons was one of them.
In May, he stood among thousands on the deck of a troopship, rifle slung across his back, leather straps biting into his shoulders. He didn’t mind. He was twenty-one, broad-shouldered from farm work, proud in his new uniform. As the ship’s horn bellowed, the men sang.
“Over there, over there…”
The song rolled across the harbor, loud and certain. Flags snapped. Mothers waved handkerchiefs. Sweethearts cried. Frank sang with them, chest swelling. A farm boy from Ohio turned soldier. This was history. “…and we won’t come back till it’s over…” he sang with the others.
Within days, history smelled like vomit.
The Atlantic was unforgiving. Men who’d never been sick a day in their lives retched over rails or into buckets. The lower decks reeked of sweat, gun oil, and fear. Hammocks swung so close together there was barely room to turn. Frank spent nights staring at the underside of the bunk above him, listening to prayers whispered in the dark.
Still, he clung to the promise. It’ll be over in a month, they said. The Germans are tired. One big push is all it’ll take.
It wasn’t.
France greeted them with mud.
Frank learned to stop noticing.
Shells fell day and night. The ground shook so often it felt alive, breathing beneath them. Mustard gas drifted low and yellow, burning eyes and lungs, turning men into choking, screaming shapes clawing at their throats. Boys barely old enough to shave cried out for their mothers as they bled into the mud.
Frank stopped singing.
By winter, the cold gnawed through wool and bone. His rifle felt heavier each day. Orders came suddenly — whispered down the line, passed hand to hand. One night, before dawn, they told Frank his unit was going over the top.
He climbed the ladder, heart pounding. When the whistle blew, the world erupted.
Machine-gun fire stitched the air. Men fell immediately, some tumbling back into the trench, others vanishing into smoke. Frank ran because stopping meant death. The mud sucked at his boots. Explosions hurled dirt and body parts skyward. The sky itself seemed to tear apart.
He fired without aiming, reloaded with shaking hands. A man beside him spun and dropped, half his face gone. Another screamed as barbed wire tore into him. Frank leaped aside a shell hole and nearly fell into water red with blood.
They reached the enemy line in a blur of noise and terror. Bayonets flashed. Shouts turned into animal sounds. Frank thrust forward, felt resistance, and yanked his rifle free without looking. Someone swung at him with a shovel; he ducked and smashed the butt of his rifle into a helmeted face. The man went down hard.
The fighting was chaos — close, brutal, desperate. No lines. No glory. Just men trying not to die.
Then something landed near his foot.
A grenade. Half-buried. Fuse hissing.
Frank grabbed it and threw.
The explosion came mid-air, a blinding flash that lifted him off his feet. For a moment, there was nothing.
Then pain.
Where his right hand had been was a mess of torn flesh and bone. His fingers were gone. Shrapnel burned in his shoulder and chest with every breath. Blood ran into his eye, soaked his sleeve, and pooled in the mud beneath him.
Medics dragged him back as the battle raged on without him. He faded in and out, staring at the gray sky, thinking absurdly of the song.
A surgeon later took what remained of his hand at the wrist. Some of the metal in his chest stayed — too dangerous to remove.
Months passed in hospitals and tents.
In February 1918, Frank rode a hospital train through the French countryside, thinner now, quieter. He stared out at gray fields sliding past.
Another train thundered by on the neighboring track, packed with fresh-faced soldiers. Their voices rose in song — loud, bright.
“And we won’t come back till…”
Frank closed his eyes.
He didn’t sing.
He turned toward the opposite window, watched the endless fields roll on, and thought, If they only knew.
M.D. Smith IV of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Spillwords, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats.
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