Whispers in the Trenches

Whispers in the Trenches

France, 1916 — Somme Battlefield

The air stank of mud, blood, and burnt dreams. Rain poured for the third day, turning the trenches into open graves. Private Thomas Redding sat with his back against the wall of sodden earth, fingers trembling as he clutched a pencil stub.

He had no more paper left. Only the inside flap of a ration box.

Still, he wrote.

“Dear Emma,

If you’re reading this, the war hasn’t taken my hands. I still have words, though few remain untouched by what I’ve seen…”

A whistle blew in the distance. Not the attack signal. Just another cruel wind echoing over no man’s land.

His friend, Corporal James Beckett, shuffled beside him. “Writing home again?”

Thomas nodded. “To Emma. I write every week. Even if the letters don’t make it.”

Beckett half-smiled, missing three teeth. “We should all be so lucky—to have someone worth writing to.”

Thomas didn’t answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the box flap.

“...Do you remember the oak tree by Miller’s farm? I dream of it often. Its silence. Its strength. Here, trees don’t grow. Only silence does—when a man screams and no one hears.”

The shelling had paused for a few hours. That meant one of two things: either the enemy was planning something, or mercy had briefly returned.

“Tell me about her,” Beckett said suddenly.

“Emma?”

“Yeah. I want to remember something good.”

Thomas smiled faintly, the kind that hurts the face because it feels foreign now.

“She laughs with her eyes first. Always said I should smile more, or the world would think I was a preacher or a poet.”

“Poet, huh?” Beckett chuckled. “Not far off.”

Thomas looked at the pencil. “Not anymore. I think war teaches you how to forget poems.”

“No,” Beckett said. “It teaches you who needs them most.”

A sudden scream cut through the calm—a boy from the next platoon had stepped on a landmine while patrolling too far. The medics ran, but silence returned faster than help.

Thomas lowered his head.

“...Today, a boy no older than seventeen died crying for his mother. I didn’t know him, but I can’t forget his voice. It keeps echoing in the trench walls, like the war doesn’t want us to forget who we’ve lost…”

Beckett lit a soggy cigarette. “We’re ghosts already, you know. Waiting for the war to finish what it started.”

“I’m not ready to die,” Thomas said softly.

“No one is,” Beckett replied. “That’s why we write. It’s the only way to stay human.”

Hours passed.

Later that night, the order came: a midnight push across no man’s land. Suicide, everyone knew it. But orders were orders.

Thomas folded his makeshift letter and tucked it deep into his coat.

“Promise me,” he said to Beckett, “if I don’t make it, send this to Emma.”

Beckett placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll hand it to her yourself.”

At midnight, whistles blew—not from the wind.

Gunfire burst into the sky like thunder splitting the stars. Thomas ran with dozens of others into the dark, cold mud, bullets tearing the air like angry spirits.

He didn’t feel the shot that hit him.

Only the fall.

He landed beside a crater, clutching the flap of the ration box. His blood mixed with ink, rain, and earth.

________________________________________

Weeks Later – Miller’s Farm, England

Emma Redding stood under the oak tree, the wind playing with her scarf. In her hands was a letter, smudged and stained, but still legible.

“...And if I do not return, know that I loved you deeper than the world’s hate. Tell our children, if we have them one day, that I was not brave—but I remembered how to write. And maybe, that’s what saved me.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks as she looked up at the tree.

The silence was strong.

And in it, she heard his whisper.