One of the creative writing assignments I gave my kids was to write something about World War I. One of my kids wanted to write a letter describing trench warfare on the Western Front during World War I.
Trench Warfare Creative Writing
To my wife at home, whom I may never see again,
The sun rose into the sky. All was quiet. The sun revealed that the earth was full of cuts and gashes. They were trenches. I was in one of them. Looking around me, I could see bullets everywhere. The earth wasn’t the only thing full of cuts and gashes. There was… I won’t say. I looked out over no man’s land.
All over the ground I saw the dead. Anything out there was smashed and broken. There was a barbed wire we had set up during the night to keep the enemies from charging into our trench. This was now a big tangled heap. From where I was, I could see the enemy trenches. I wondered if they had set up a big tangled heap of their own.
Suddenly a shot was fired, directly at my face. For half an hour, I watched the bullet get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Like a cow staring at an oncoming train, I just watched it. By the time it was so close I could see that it had a smiley face printed on it. My brain screamed, “Melvin! You idiot! What are you doing?!?”
I brought my head down into the trench, but not before the bullet cut a swath through my hair, right next to the other swath in my hair from the same thing that happened yesterday. Everyone in my trench was jealous of my awesome haircut. Frankly, I don’t know what they’re so jealous of. One of these days it will be my face. I dread the smiley face bullet.
I don’t know why I signed up for this war. I don’t know why we’re having this war in the first place. When I enlisted, I didn’t know what war was like. I didn’t even know they made smiley face bullets. Oh well, another day, another haze of shells. Tomorrow will be my next eyeball fight with my arch-nemesis.
Love,
Melvin
Tags: American History, history, modern history, World War I
