Ypres On summer holiday in Belgium we visited the trenches. A June day while birds chirped and red poppies pirouetted in the sun my children laughed as they scrambled in and out of gouges in the earth. We wondered what life had been - bombs bursting, clods hailing days and nights, deafening. mud sucking, wounds stinking, friends falling hopes dying in furrows underground. The guide said that some who could not take it anymore went over the top, stumbled into poisoned clouds or ran into enemy lines seeking a bullet to deliver them. "I can't imagine," my husband said. But one does not have to visit trenches we learned to experience a battle. Ten years later an email came from our wayward child. "Sit down," he told me softly, his eyes red and wet. I retreated into a hell hole as his barrage of words thundered in my ears like cannons over Ypres. With all our hopes raining down like dirt into our blackness I heard my husband's breath rattle in his throat. He sagged against the wall, his heart shredded on the wires. My throat burned. Blinded, I lurched from my position groping for a No Man's Land where I could find my bullet.
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