"India Edghill - We Are the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill India)

That gay defiance was true no longer; eight weeks of hunger and cold, mortar
barrages and fleas, sickness and stench, had begun the rot. Peter’s first go Over the
Top had completed his destruction. Untouched himself, Peter had — as Simon’s
letter of dutiful commendation had phrased it — “nobly and without thought of his
own safety killed two of the enemy and carried Private Mellors back to the safety of
our own lines.”

Or, in plain English, Peter had ripped the throats out of two German soldiers
no older than first-term schoolboys with his bayonet and dragged a screaming man
across one hundred yards of shell-poxed dirt, leaving a trail of blood and flesh
behind.

The C.O. had put Peter in for a medal. Private Mellors had died five minutes
after being tumbled into their own trench. And all that was left of Peter was a
pleasantly witty ghost.

Don’t think, Simon reminded himself, and picked up another empty tin. His
contribution to the Christmas cheer was to be a star to grace the makeshift
Christmas tree. A silver star, bright and false as hope.

A star created of bully beef tins clumsily banged into hammered brightness
with the butt of a Webley service revolver. When it was finished, he would wait until
Christmas morning dawned, and then he would tie the star to the top of the half-dead
holly tree.

And celebrate his fourth Christmas spent in the mud and ice of this trench
near what was left of Cambrai, France.

The poppies blow

Another day over and done with. At first she had tried to keep count, but now
she could no longer remember how long she had been here. Nearly a year, she
thought, and thought that only because she had heard some of the older women
whispering that it was Hanukkah again next week. She didn’t know how they knew
that. All she knew was that the days were now short and cold instead of long and
hot. And that there was less food; less even than the little there had been before,
when it was too hot.

Nearly a year, and that only because she was lucky. The fortunate one; the
family’s golden girl. She had been the fair twin, and Hannah the darker sister. And so
Hannah had been sent to one line, and she to another. Because her hair was blonde.
A mitzvah, some of the women here had told her. She was still alive; be happy.

“No! No, I want to go with my sister!” Her own voice screaming, and her
arms clinging, and then her fingers, and Hannah being ripped away inch by inch, until
she held only one of Hannah’s bright red mittens in her desperate hands, and Hannah
was gone ....

Of all her family, only she was left, to endure. And wait until the day she
didn’t pass inspection; didn’t meet whatever arbitrary standard held that inevitable