re: The worst wars to be a US soldier in

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Due to the helicopter, troops in Vietnam saw more days of combat than their predecessors.

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Verdun POV

Verdun, February 21, 1916.

You huddle in a trench, deep as a grave and not much wider, the frost of French February clinging frigid to your moustache. You are 19, and yet already you have seen horror enough for many lifetimes. You cut your teeth at the Marne, where you and your comrades bravely beat back the Hun, stalling their advance further into France. You killed your first man there, a blue eyed boy no older than yourself. You still see his wide open eyes filled with terror when you dream. The scene plays out as your gun erupts into his chest as he clambers over the trenchtop. He lies there, next to you, blood flowing from his mouth, his lips pleading “Mutter, mutter, mutter.” So blue, so haunting, so young.

Your eyes snap open from a fitful sleep. Always his eyes are there. No matter now. The rest that have fallen beneath your gun and bayonet are merely a blur. Now, you wait here in the trenches near Verdun. You make your way to the latrine and answer nature’s insistent call. It ushers forth like a cannonburst. You haven’t had a proper shite in weeks as dysentery runs rampant through the trenches. The water here is fetid at best, stinking of chemicals and rot. The food is little better, stale bread and cold soup delivered in old gasoline cans. You drink the wine, when you can get it.

Death surrounds you here in the trenches, where men fall as often to disease as they do bullets. Bodies with staring eyes are commonplace, and commoner still are the rats that infest every nook and cranny, gnawing at men and rations all the same. You’ve killed so many you lost count at 73, but there are always more to fill their ranks.

Suddenly, your ears prick up at a heavy, rhythmic sound in the distance. Like a distant drum beating “Doom, doom, doom.” Some mad, manmade thunder.
Then…the maw of hell opens and as the ground around you erupts you realize it has begun.

Verdun.

The shells scream down with banshee wails as wet earth and warm blood rain down on you. The sky is split with a deafening roar, thunderclaps of fire and death that blow men to smithereens and dig out holes the size of houses. The shells are falling with an intensity never before known. There is no longer any rhythm to it, only screaming madness. You watch as down the line a group of your comrades is obliterated as a shell falls directly on them. You stare in horror and scream wordlessly as body parts fly down the trench, arms and legs and heads mangled beyond recognition.

You try to speak but your words are lost in the cacophony as splinters and bits of bone and shrapnel bite into you. You can FEEL the air around you vibrating your teeth in your head, every sense overwhelmed by this cannon orchestra. Every ounce of survival tells you to run but there is nowhere to run. Your blood is pumping like percussion as it cries “get out get out get OUT GETOUTGETOUT!” But everywhere around you is the same. Men screaming, bleeding, dying. Holding the bloody stumps where their limbs once were, struggling to hold the guts from spilling out the ragged holes in their stomachs.

There is no enemy to battle for their guns are miles away. No way to make it stop, make it end. You can only huddle in this mud and blood filled hole, unable to make out the screams of the dying over the incessant explosions of the damnable shells. You cry for your own mother as you close your eyes, only to see those bright blues of that German boy, scared and pleading just the same.
“Mutter, mutter, mutter.”
Your eyes fly back open, a hand is wiping the mud and blood away as your comrade struggles to pull you up, mouthing words you cannot hope to hear.

You struggle up, taking hold of the outstretched hand reaching for you. Bleeding from umpteen tears you find your feet, the vibrations of the falling shells rattling every bone in your body. You try to move down the trenches, tripping over mangled bodies and ruined trenchworks as the explosions endlessly throw up earth and gore. Men huddle in the holes around you, bleeding, dying. Shitting in their helmets and throwing it over the side, desperate to hide from the ceaseless barrage.

Then all of a sudden the whole bloody world slows to a crawl measured in heartbeats as shell lands near where the wounded and damned take refuge. The lucky are obliterated in an instant as the hellbang explodes, singeing mangled men into burger as it rends them asunder. You watch as the man who pulled you out the muck has his head torn from his body. You feel yourself flying fluid through the air, landing roughly, like a broken toy. Your eyes glance down to find your legs at odd, unnatural angles. Your guts steam in the cold, raw sausages hanging out your belly as you close your eyes, only to see his, bright and blue.
Crying, “Mutter…mutter…mutter.”

Verdun

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