Free Isle Royale by John Hamilton Page B

quick the German never had a chance to react. I wrapped one arm around him from behind, then drew my knife across his throat. I felt the blade slice through tissue and arteries, then scrape across his spine. I jerked the knife free and stepped back. The German made an inhuman gurgling noise as he brought both hands up, clutching at his throat. He turned towards me, and as he did, great spurts of crimson sailed through the air, splashing my face and uniform.
    I stood there in shock, not from the blood, but from the round, blue-eyed face staring back at me. The “soldier” whose throat I’d just slit couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. The Germans were sending children to the trenches! I staggered and fell backwards into the mud.
    The boy stood there, looking down on me, his eyes wide with fear, his hands still clutching at the mortal wound. Dark red liquid gushed from between his fingers. He mouthed something I couldn’t make out, then finally collapsed, jerked over onto his back, and lay still.
    Up above, outside the bomb crater, I could hear the German trench line waking in response to the racket we’d made. Voices shouted amidst sporadic rifle fire as the Germans tried to determine the source of the disturbance. Somewhere, a machine gunner with a hair trigger began firing blindly into no-man’s land, creating a noise like angry metallic hornets whizzing above the crater. Star shells went off, casting a harsh flat light against the wasteland. I was good as dead once the Germans discovered I’d occupied their sentry post. But that’s not what was on my mind at that moment.
    I crawled over to the boy, still reeling from the realization I’d just slashed a child’s throat. I cupped his head in my hands, wincing at the sight of the ugly gash below the chin, which still oozed blood. The boy’s eyes fluttered, then he looked up at me. Under the grime and dirt caking his skin, I saw the face of a boy who should be home playing in a schoolyard, climbing trees, or kissing his first girl, not thrown into the living hell of the trenches. His eyes were like pools of blue light, flickering and waning, extinguished before their time. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
    The boy croaked something. I leaned closer, trying to make out his words from what little German I understood. As I came within inches of his face, once more I froze in shock. The blue eyes, which moments ago seemed such a bastion of innocence and purity, now blazed with hate. It seemed that they should burst then, and all the fury of hell come shrieking out to consume me.
    With his remaining strength, the boy raised his head and spat in my face. The mix of saliva and foaming crimson burned against my cheek. I knelt there, unmoving and tight-lipped, letting the liquid drip off me. The boy dropped his head back and lay still, ready to receive death as the last of his blood flowed into the mud.
    From my pocket I produced a hand grenade. I pulled the pin and held the grenade in front of me for the boy to see. He stared at it a moment, then looked back up into my eyes. A faint, bitter smile crept onto his lips. Death took him then.
    I honestly meant to blow us both up then, Collene. How could I live with myself, now that I was a child murderer? I could no longer exist in the hell of the trenches. At that moment, I would have done anything to escape. I was the scum of humanity. Surely, God had already cast me aside. I gripped the bomb in my hand and shut my eyes tight.
    Once again, though, army training took over. At the last moment I hurled the grenade over the lip of the crater toward the German trench line. It went off with a boom, mingled with the screams of enemy soldiers. More blood on my hands, all because I lacked the courage to put an end to my miserable existence. Add another title to my name: Coward.
    I lobbed two more grenades at the German trenches, hoping to create enough mayhem to enable me to make a dash for my own side. It was a futile