Entrenched

There were rats in the trench from the second night it was dug. They bit holes in the sandbags and shat all through the dirt. The soldiers would grab them with fast hands and chuck them like grenades over the razorwire. Sometimes a rat would be shot in frustration and the guts would splash darkly against the packed dirt in a grim mimicry of the situation.

"You want one?" said Gill. He tilted his cigarette forward before lifting it into his mouth. The rat scuttled awat. "Stupid rat."

"Talking to yourself, Gill?" asked the Lieutenant.

"I'll tell ya, Muzz, these rats are a fucking curse. Smoke?" He passed a cigarette to the Lieutenant, who lit it behind his cupped hand. "Don't you think it's a bad sign?"

"Sign? They'll be dead by the weekend. Base is sending up ten kilos of rat sack. That'll be a sign."

"Looks like rain," said Gill. "Does it rain here?"

"Now and then."

"Christ, this place is going to be a muddy cesspit."

"Enjoy it," said the Lieutenant. "If we're driven out of here you won't even have a cesspit."

The rain came during the night, hard and constant. It didn't stop until eleven the next morning. The trenches had flooded to thigh height, the water coffee-grey, its surface filmed with old paper and rat shit and dirt. Gill waded through it, tired, his rifle held above his head in one hand, a bucket skimming along in the other.

"Hey! Gill!" Gill turned - Reggie, a tall, pale soldier was behind him. "Forget the bucket. We have to get out of here. Boss says we've got orders to retreat."

"Retreat? But we haven't even-"

"Doesn't matter. It'd take a week to drain this place and the locals would have us in a real tight spot if they got here before that. The front's withdrawing. Forget the bucket."

Gill glanced back towards the other side of the trench before he let the bucket go. It bobbed in the water. A rat paddled past it, claws flailing desperately, its wet, hairy body hardly able to keep above the surface. The soggy troops retreated in open-roofed trucks, leaving the crates of rations and beer hidden silently under the now still waters.

Much later, when the trenches had dried, the rats came back; scurrying along the empty corridors, they gnawed at deserted boxes and slept in hard-packed corners. For a long time the trench was this way, inhabitted by only the rats, wood, dried paper and empty buckets.