A Soldier's Beginning

They emerge through the depths of the canopy of the forest, strung out in clumps of uniform as if welded together in threes or fours, dark smears spread throughout the already browning threadbare blanket of leaves. A bite in the air already. They edge out across the clearing, knees cracking, paths crossing. They move with a sort of directionless purpose, going nowhere but noticing everything. Game birds scurry up through the marsh grass, ignored for a change. The lake slouches nearby, and smells like cordite. Water voles escape from its fringes and plop into the water. Tossed away by the distance, the sound of the steam whistle forces itself through: an invisible train, scouring past the lakes and the flat heaths, taking the bodies away. They pull the butts of their rifles to the bruises of their shoulders and cover each other, gun barrels in raised diagonals like the empty skeleton of a hayrick. They smell like shit and look like walking cobwebs.
A sort of bruised silence spreads across the clearing as the train retreats: something remains that feels like empty rumbling but has no sound. It swells across as slow and inexorable as a spring flood. They lower their rifles. Lock eyes. Scuff at the lumps of peat at their feet. The minutes fold between them. It is like an eyes-open godless prayer, layers of hope and despair ricocheting from head to head as the buzzard squeals and the water laps and the topmost branches of the birches edge across each other, whimpering in the wind as the bark showers down.
They recognise that they had inadvertently arranged themselves into a rough circle. The lieutenant fetches out a hip flask, takes a delicate swig. Gazes at the sky. Clenches the corners of his mouth. Lowers his gaze.
Finally, one of them speaks. “Fuck all here, then.”
Another says, “Fuck all what? Mines or enemy?”
“Either.”
“What would you prefer?” asks another.
“Neither,” says the first. “I’m not complaining.”
The second slumps to the ground, pulls at his moss-stained boots. “Wouldn’t mind some action, meself. Fuck all here.” The boots stay stuck.
“That’s what I said,” says the first. “The only difference is, I’m not complaining. I’m not going out of my way to look for danger.”
“Give us a hand, will you? Can’t seem to shift these bastards.”
“Just told you, didn’t I? I’m not looking for danger. The mines can stay buried; the enemy can go fuck themselves, and if you think I’m risking life and limb taking them boots from your diseased little feet, you’ve got another think coming. You’d get frostbite in the tropics, you would: if I help you take them fucking boots off, they’ll be a shower of fucking toes from here to Timbuk-fucking-tu!”
“Yeah, well you get to know who your friends are soon enough.” He tugs again at his right boot, one hand on the heel, the other tugging downwards from the top. The boot, a patched-together mess of cracked leather permeated with the stains of a trampled undergrowth, refuses to budge from his leg; it is as if the forest has applied parts of itself - a fusion of dead skin and living plant matter - upon him like a poultice and insisted that he never part from it; not without parting from his own skin, that is. They stand around him, watching.
“What you gonna do if you do get them off?” one of them asks.
“Clean my feet.”
“Clean your feet where?”
“There – in the fucking lake! Where d’you think where?”
“Oh, poison the fucking water supply, why don’t you?” says another. “Very friendly, very hygienic.”
“My feet are killing me – they’re gonna rot to hell and back if I don’t get them seen to. Give us a hand, will you?”
“OK. Stay there. Relax. Right. Go!”
The boot slides off, a green leather shell from a grey kernel of a foot turned half to fungus in the portable darkness of a month of marching. It smells like abandoned meat festering in the heat of summer. They gasp for air, and abandon their ragged circle to head up wind, clasping their rifles tight in their hands. With a sort of frenzy of insensitivity, he kicks off the other boot and hobbles towards the lake. He splatters himself into the mud and slaps his feet into the cooling sluggishness of the lake water. An owl flies out. Circles him. Returns to the forest.