World War One surpassed all previous human conflicts in its sheer homicidal stupidity. But as horrible as the trenches and shellholes of the Western Front were, what lurked beneath them was even worse. Read on . . . if you dare!
THE HORRORS OF WAR
A Short Story by Lewis B. Smith
(From the recorded psychiatric sessions of Dr. Richard Golightly, PhD, Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, NYC)
I know they will just say I have shellshock, Doctor. God knows I should have it, with some of the stuff I saw over there. I slept next to corpses, I saw a guy I graduated high school with get his head taken off by shrapnel in the Argonne, and his brains splashed onto my uniform. Brains actually STINK, did you know that? It took forever to get that smell out of my jacket! I saw plenty of rough stuff during the war - I've seen men go catatonic going through less than what I experienced on that one day. But not me.
I won't say those things didn't affect me. They did – hell, I still wake up screaming sometimes from the things I saw and the things I did, while I was in France! Stuff like that will change a person, any person. I'll carry the memories of the dead and dying, the killing I did and the killings I saw, to my grave with me. But I can still function. I can hold down a job, I can go home to my woman. Combat was rough, and I saw some awful things. But none of those are why I'm here. None of those are why I can't go into any cellar or basement or subway tunnel anymore. They have nothing to do with why I started screaming yesterday when I saw that guy come crawling out of a manhole on 45th Street.
Then why did I react so badly? I'll get there, I promise. I have to work my way up to it, Doc. It's just too much to remember all at once, too much to just blurt it out. Some boils are too painful to be lanced in one big jab.
Yeah, that's easy for you to say. You weren't there. You didn't have your whole view of the world fundamentally altered in a matter of seconds while cowering in a shellhole full of corpses, either! At least, it was full of corpses when I went to sleep. But when I woke up. . .
Sorry, I'm getting too far ahead. God, look at my hands shake. I need a drink. Please? Just one glass of Scotch or good Kentucky Bourbon?
Brandy? That'll do, I guess. A little more high-toned than what I'm used to, but the Brits swear by the stuff. Got a light?
OK, that's better. I can breathe again. Stupid coffin nails! I never smoked the things before I joined the army, now I go through a couple of packs a day. They calm me, somehow. Except when I think too hard about that awful night - then I have to have liquor. Which, of course, our government in its wisdom has seen fit to ban. No skin off my back, though. My cousin runs the biggest speakeasy in Hell's Kitchen, so I can get the hooch whenever I need it. And that seems to be more and more often, these days. He's the one who said I should come see you. Sez you can help guys like me, who have seen too much of the "horrors of war!" Hah! Horrors of war, he sez. A pile of mangled bodies is nothing to what I saw that night, Doc. That's why seeing that subway worker coming out of the manhole with that hose over his shoulder made me have the screaming heebie-jeebies in the middle of the street! For a second I thought . . . well, I guess I have to tell you, don't I?
So, it was July of 1918. I was serving under General Mac in the 42nd Division, there in the Meuse-Argonne, right before we began the big push. We'd already blunted Ludendorff's last offensive and forced the Krauts back into their old trench line, and were waiting for reinforcements so we could break their lines once and for all. Scuttlebutt said that there were two fresh divisions coming forward by the end of the week, and we knew we were in for some action.
That's when Captain Jenkins came up to me and said: "Smitty, I need you to do a trench raid tomorrow night. Bring back as many Kraut prisoners as you can, so we can find out how many brigades are in front of us. Gather up a squad – keep it to a dozen or less, so you can get across no-man's land quickly and quietly. There's a weekend pass to Paris in it for you if you can bring back a German officer!"
So after that, I went back to my platoon and picked out eight of my best men, all tough, experienced kids from right here in Hell's Kitchen. You can't beat a New York street rat when it comes to combat situations. I told them to catch some winks that afternoon, because we'd be over the top come midnight. After they headed to the dugouts, I went to our forward listening post and talked to the watch.
"Funny thing, Sarge," he said. "I think the Germans must have sent a burial detail out last night. Take a look. See that big shellhole just to the left of the big roll of barbed wire that isn't unspooled all the way?"
I looked through the trench periscope and saw the mass of tangled wire he was pointing at, then spotted the shellhole. It looked like any other gaping pit of hell in that stretch of no-man's-land, just a circular pit full of muddy water with a rim of mud thrown up around it by the force of an exploding artillery round.
"Looks like any other shellhole on the front to me," I said.
"It is, except last night there were a dozen or more bodies in and around it," he said. "Now they are all gone, every last one of them."
"Did the night watch report any Kraut activity?" I asked. We usually didn't shoot at soldiers out recovering bodies, as long as they stay near their own trench line. But usually such details would come out under a white flag.
"None," he said. "And there were flares going up, off and on, all night. But yesterday there was a pile of half-rotted corpses, and today they are all gone."
"Pretty strange," I said. "We are going to be crossing about a hundred yards down from here. Tell the night watch if he sees movement over by DogTrot Squad's marker around midnight, that we're friendlies."
"Best of luck and give'em hell!" he replied.
I headed over to our bunker to catch a nap myself, but it was bloody hot. July in France is no cooler than July in the Bowery, I can tell you that. We had a good reinforced bunker, about twenty feet deep, with sandbags piled all around the braces and some makeshift bunk beds to keep us off the ground, so the lice wouldn't be so bad. But I laid there and sweated for an hour, too hot to sleep. Finally, I decided it would be worth it to brave the cooties just to cool off. I grabbed my blanket and stole an extra pillow from my buddy's bunk – he was on duty – and stretched out on the bare dirt. The light from the entrance was in my face, though, so I rolled over and pulled the pillow down tight over my eyes to shut it out. The ground was cooler than my bunk, and I faded off not long after.
When I woke up it was dark out, and my hair was plastered to my scalp with sweat, but at least I had gotten some rest. I remembered one thing, a small thing, but odd, right as I dozed off, and it has haunted me ever since.
The trenches are noisy all the time. Soldiers tramping back and forth, the thud of artillery shells booming in the distance, the chatter of machine guns as bored GI's and Krauts try to shoot rats – or each other. I was used to all that and could block it out whenever I was sleeping. But there was a different sound that night, and it was coming from UNDER our dugout. It was a wet, viscous sliding sound, as if the world's biggest earthworm were tunneling through the soil beneath me. For a moment I thought it might be Kraut sappers, planting a mine beneath our trenches – but there was no crunch of soil on metal, no voices, no footfalls. Just that slow wet sliding that tapered off to nothingness as I strained to hear it. Within a few minutes, all I could hear were the normal noises of war, and then I faded off to sleep. I might have thought I was imagining it, if not for what happened that night.
I woke at ten, just as the last light was fading from the sky. I washed my face and brushed my teeth – gads, my mouth tasted like a pack of unsanitary trolls had used it for a latrine – and went to wake my boys. I could feel the damned lice crawling all over me and was cursing my decision to sleep on the ground.
But there would be time to scratch later. We were busy painting our faces with bootblack and muffling our gear as we prepared to go over the top. Finally, at midnight, we slowly eased up over the parapet and began making our way to the first line of barbed wire. Our sappers had cut a small gap through it the night before, and we eased through, one at a time, being as quiet as church mice!
No man's land – have you ever seen it, Doc? Were you over there? No photograph does it justice. There are bodies everywhere in every state of rot there is, and sometimes you can actually hear the maggots, rats, and insects devouring them from the inside out. The smell – the foulest garbage bin in Manhattan doesn't even begin to compare! There's hardly any grass, just churned-up mud, pieces of shrapnel and barbed wire, bones, discarded gear, and shell holes everywhere, large and small. If hell is worse than no-man's land, then I hope I never go there. If there even is a hell. My view of the afterlife changed that night, too.
We slipped through that gap in the wire and started crossing, running hunched over from shell hole to shell hole, and were about two thirds of the way to the German barbed wire when disaster struck.
It was one of our own, some idiot night sentry – I don't know if my message hadn't been relayed, or maybe it was just some green recruit with a bad case of nerves, but the first flare definitely came from our trenches. We froze for a second in shock, but the Germans caught sight of us, and next thing you know, flares are going up all up and down their trench line, and the machine guns opened up on us. We all dove for the nearest shell hole, but Hawkins, Giurello, and Davis were all hit and dropped where they stood. Simpson was shot through the leg and was trying to crawl into a shellhole when a second burst finished him. Aguire was right behind me, and dove for the same hole I did. He landed on top of me, but when I checked to see if he was all right, the top of his head was gone. He must have taken a round right as he was diving for cover.
It was a pretty deep shellhole, and littered with bodies, as most of them were. Lots of guys dive into a hole thinking they'll wait and crawl to safety after dark, but the Krauts are patient. They'll keep a sniper rifle trained on a hidden doughboy for hours, waiting for him to move, and more than one soldier has been killed the minute he poked his head up and tries to crawl for our lines.
I called out to see if any of my other guys had made it. Only McCaughlin answered – he'd been bringing up the rear and was huddled in a shellhole a few yards behind me. He told me that he was hit, but not too bad. Eight of us headed out, and now five were dead, and one – Larson – was lying unconscious in the open. I heard they actually found him still breathing when our guys charged the German line two days later.
So there I lay, bodies all around me, flares going off above me, and tracer rounds crisscrossing the air over my head. I was cussing the stupid sentry who set off that first flare and wondering if I would ever see New York again when the artillery started up. I think it was the German's way of making sure they got us all, and it nearly worked. I know one shell landed where I'd heard McLaughlin a few minutes before, and I never heard him again. Then a big one burst really close to my hiding place, and the concussion knocked me out.
I don't know how long I was unconscious, but it was still dark when I woke up. The guns had all gone silent, but there were still flares going up every couple of minutes. I lay there, not sure what to do next, when I heard a slow sucking sound coming from my feet.
The shellhole I had fallen into was half full of water when I dove in, like most of the ones up and down no-man's land. It had rained pretty hard the week before, and the heat hadn't evaporated all the puddles and ponds yet. But the water was draining out the bottom of the shellhole I was hiding in, with a little whirlpool forming in it for all the world like someone had pulled the plug in their bathtub. I thought I was hallucinating, but then I heard the distinct sound of water being sucked down the hole. In a matter of seconds, it was all gone.
At the bottom of the shellhole, a perfectly round opening in the mud was now visible. Mud fell in along its edges, and I could hear the wet plopping sound as the clods hit bottom somewhere below. I tensed up, but what could I do? If I jumped out of that hole every Kraut within a half mile would be shooting at me.
Then something came out of the hole, something long and curling, like the tail of a snake or the tentacle of an octopus. It swept around, feeling its way across the bottom of the shellhole, until it encountered Aguire's boot. It wrapped itself around his ankle, and as I watched, my friend's body was pulled down into that tunnel or burrow or whatever it was. I heard the most awful crunching and smacking sounds coming from the ground, and then a wet slithering as that tendril re-emerged.
I was paralyzed for a moment, then I pulled both my feet in as tight as I could beneath me, wrapping my arms around my legs and breathing as softly as possible. In a moment, the tentacle encountered a much older corpse, one that had rotten flesh melted off of it and a puddle of goop beneath. The thing wrapped around both its feet and started dragging it downward, but when the body got to the lip of the hole, the ribs caught and the pelvis and legs pulled off with a wet ripping sound. Seconds later, a second tentacle emerged and wrapped around the upper torso, pulling the whole thing under. More wet crunching sounds ensued.
Why I didn't run then, I'll never know. But I huddled there, breathing harder and harder, as one by one every corpse around the perimeter of the shellhole was pulled underground and devoured. I could hear that awful wet sliding sound I thought I had imagined earlier, now directly beneath me, the earth trembling slightly as some unimaginably huge bulk slid below the surface.
When the last corpse was gone, the tendril emerged again, wet and glistening in the light of the distant flares and probed around the perimeter of the shellhole. I scooted as far away as possible, but it still brushed against the toe of my boot. I scooted away with a gasp of disgust and horror, and it yanked back as if it had touched a live wire.
Can I please have another drink? I need it before I can talk about this last part. Thanks, man. This brandy isn't that bad, I can see why the Brits like it so much. Definitely better than rum – that stuff's too sweet for me!
All right. This part is what broke me, Doc. This is why I am here. I can't get it out of my head, no matter how hard I try. I know you don't believe a word of it, but I was there!
Like I said, when that tentacle or antenna or whatever it was brushed against my foot, it yanked back and disappeared underground in a flash. But then the ground began shaking, and that round opening at the bottom of the shellhole surged upward as something pushed its way up through the mud and clay. I was shaking like a leaf by then and gasping for breath. A huge, pulsating mass pushed up through the earth, and then some sort of membrane pulled back and I saw . . . oh God, doctor, I saw an eye! But nothing on earth should have eyes that big!
It was three feet across at least, glowing red and slit like a cat's eye. It appeared to be set into some sort of giant fleshy pillar or stalk, and when it rotated towards me, the pupil dilated. IT SAW ME. In all my life, Doc, I have never felt so naked. Whatever it was, it looked at me and in me and through me all at once, and I felt like everything I was, everything I'd ever done, and everything I am was bared to it.
And then it spoke. Whether it was actually making the words with some mouth I don't even want to imagine, or just projecting its thoughts into my brain, I don't know and don't care. I just knew I had to get away from it, get out of its sight, get that awful gaze out of my mind, body, and soul.
I jumped up, screaming at the top of my lungs, and ran. I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life! Machine guns opened up all along the German line, bullets kicked up mud and dirt all around me, but I didn't care. Death would have been a mercy. Just before I lost all sense of its presence, I swear I heard it laughing at me, and that laugh took what little sanity I had left.
I was running blind, but by purest chance I hit the gap in the wire we had come through. It laid my arm open and tore off the sleeve of my uniform jacket, but that was the only injury I sustained. I have no memory of diving into our trenches, or of being wrestled to the ground, or anything that I said. I woke up in a field hospital two days later, and they sent me to a sanitarium to regain my senses. Captain Jenkins came to see me and said that my screams could be heard for a mile up and down the trench line.
"What did you mean?" he asked me. "You kept saying over and over again; 'It eats the dead! Something in the ground is eating the dead!' What the hell did you see out there, soldier?"
I just shook my head. By that time, I was on the mend, but I knew if I told the captain what I had seen, I'd spend the rest of my enlistment in the loony bin. So I told him I didn't remember anything. He believed me, I guess, and a couple weeks later I was back with our outfit as we pushed the Germans out of their lines and back towards the border. In October I caught a bullet through the thigh, and that was the end of my war. I came home, got my discharge papers, and found a job down at the loading docks once I was healed up.
But every time I hear something underground, every time I am in a cellar or a tunnel, I hear that wet sliding sound and think about where that thing must be – and how hungry it must be, now that the war is over. Then I saw that article in the Times this morning about the War Graves Commission's report, and that brought it all back. I was on my way to work, trying not to think about it, when that manhole cover pushed up, and a guy came out with a water hose over his shoulder, and that's when I had my breakdown.
So that's my story, Doc, and that is why I am afraid all the time. There are worse things than war, and there are horrors lurking under this earth that make the worse things men can do to other men seem charitable by comparison. It's so hard, knowing things no one else knows. I try to function like a normal person, but when I close my eyes, I still hear that horrible voice.
What did it say? Are you sure you want to know? Maybe it won't unhinge you the way it did me – after all, you just think this whole story is the ravings of a madman. But if you let yourself believe, for even a second, that it was real, then you will never see the world the same way again.
That voice – how can I describe it? Deep as the darkest grave, bubbling with rot, gleeful with evil, low and rumbling and brimming with malice? None of those things even come close. The sound of it alone was bad enough, but the words it said made it infinitely worse! This is what I heard as I huddled in a shellhole in France, which had been full of human bodies just a few moments before. These are the words of whatever lurks in the ground, with tentacles like an octopus and red eyes a yard across, filled with malice and contempt for every good and decent thing that walks abroad on this earth:
"Insignificant little mortal, it is well for you that my hunger is slaked. You will keep . . . for now. But all of you come to me in the end. I shall see you soon enough."
Doctor's note: After listening to former Sergeant Robert G. Smith's story, I was curious as to the piece in the Times that he mentioned. Upon perusing the paper, I found this short article:
US Battlefield Graves Commission Finishes Its Work Early
The Army group in charge of burying our war dead in France has wrapped up its work on the Meuse-Argonne battlefield several weeks ahead of schedule. Members reported, off the record, that the number of bodies recovered was about half of what was expected, based on casualty reports from both Allied and enemy forces. It is speculated that the missing bodies of the war dead were simply pulverized by shell fire, or that casualty reports may have been greatly exaggerated. Thus far, the army has issued no official statement.
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