Dave's Anatomy: My History As A Writer #67: "Dead Man's Dump."

War is something the human race does that has built-in element of horror.  And horrific as all wars are, some stand out as particular gruesome. World War I is such an example.  Here you had armies fighting with modern weapons but still using old-style battle tactics. Men moved out in ranks against high-powered rifles and artillery. Cavalry charged machine-gun emplacements. Flame-throwers, poison gas, trench warfare, and the massive slaughter of men (plus civilians, men, women, and children) single World War I out s particularly horrific and ghastly.

Poet Isaac Rosenberg

The story, "Dead Man's Dump," came from a poem by Isaac Rosenberg. Rosenberg was one of the many talented poets who died in World War I, and the poetry he left behind is some of the best poetry from that conflict and some of the hardest to read--not because it is poorly written but because the subject matter is so difficult to encounter.

A "dead man's dump" is a place where the bodies of those killed at the front lines and taken and laid out to await transportation further behind lines, identification, and burial. In this particular story, the dead will save the living.

World War I is drawing to an end. The narrator of the story, a platoon sergeant, is thinks his unit will be home for Thanksgiving. His friend, a lower-ranking sergeant does not agree. He sees a German attack brewing. The Germans are in a bad way, have been stopped in their last advance and suffered several heavy defeats at the hands of the allied forces. The narrator's unit, in fact, recently repulsed an attack, though the cost of repulsing it was heavy, with many in their unit killed.

As the days pass, the certainty of an attack builds. The Germans bring in fresh troops and new artillery pieces.  Surveillance aircraft and observers who manage to get close to the German lines say the same thing. The Germans are preparing for another attack even though their army has lost support at home and its hierarchy is negotiating a peace treaty.

Discouraged by what he has heard, the narrator of the story remembers going through a dead man's dump. Normally, troops did not go through such areas for the sake of morale, but a greenhorn lieutenant had mistakenly led his until between ranks of corpses, some recently killed, some recovered later, all laid out in evens ranks. Soldiers on burial details (who were usually African-American soldiers in World War I) were loading them into ambulances and trucks for transport and burial.  The Lieutenant is reprimanded for his action, but the incident has its demoralizing effect. The narrator and the other troops saw several dead from their unit among the laid-out copses. The narrator has to admit that the German forces they are facing will attack again and all of them will be in the dead man's dump.

Soldiers with flowers in their rifles

That night, flares go off on the German side. This puzzles them. Attackers do not light flares; those who are under attack to do they can see the advancing enemy.  They puzzle:  is someone attacking the Germans? They wonder if a British, French, or another American unit may have attacked them. Their commander has not been told of any plans for another unit to attack the Germans. The battle is ferocious. They can see troop movement in the flashes of gunfire and in explosions. They hold their position, at high alert, ready for an attack.

The attack does not come. In the morning, they are bone weary. The noise of combat has died down and the German position they face is quiet. Soon a British officer shows up and says he has good news for them:  the war is over. The Germans have surrendered. Hostilities have ceased.

Despite the news, the men stay huddled in the trenches. No one wants to be shot by a straggler who has not heard of the surrender. After a while, some of the stretcher-bearers come to the camp to ask what has happened to the bodies in the staging area—in the dead man's dump. They had all disappeared.

The narrator knows what has happened. He says he is going to the German lines. When he and a few others arrive there, the Germans are gone. They have abandoned their position. He and the soldiers with him find the bodies of many friends who had died in the last engagement and whose corpses they had seen at the dead man's dump. They had not wanted their friends to die the day before the war ended. They came to fight just one last time.

The story appeared in Absent Willow Review, a journal that no longer publishes and, unfortunately, does not keep an archive.

For more titles, check out my Writer's Page.

For the tale of a Japanese warrior Princess best not antagonized, read The Sorceress of Time.  Princess Jing Lin is facing challenges. The key to the future lies in the past.

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