Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: This was quite a neat little piece of writing. Its capture a single simple scene and I think you do it really well. The descriptions manage to really tell a story through just those descriptions and that's wonderful.
Anyway let's get right to it,
The ominous, sullen sky looms over the trench, reflecting the expressions of the soldiers waiting inside, deaf with fatigue, and laying or sitting still and hushed as death. Their uniforms are tattered, discoloured from many winters of icy, knifing winds and incessant, maddening rain. Their helmets lie carelessly scattered on the dusty ground, covered with dried mud, forming meandering maps of cracks on their dull, dented surface. Their faces are haggard and exhausted, stained with the filth and blood of the trench. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, the distant, muffled thundering of gunfire can be heard.
Oooh I am absolutely loving this opening here. It immediately establishes a very powerful sense of the atmosphere and I absolutely love that. You just immediately know exactly the vibe of what's going down here just slowly building everything from the world around the scene to just what everyone is feeling in the moment. Its very powerful and I think it sets it up to beautifully to that very powerful last line there.
Instinctively, the soldiers stiffen, edging their bruised, calloused towards their mud-stained weapons, while the threatening roar of battle grows, intermingled with agonised cries of soldiers cut down by cruel barbed wire and biting bullets, falling into the glutinous, overturned, bitter mud of the battlefield. Orders can now be heard, briskly shouted by pallid officers, waking emaciated soldiers, and causing them to rise, on creaking, feeble legs, blue with bruises and crippling cold, from their trance-like state of fatigue. They stand, swaying in the knifing, numbing wind, listening with morbid anticipation, as the sky, almost black with smoke and gunpowder, lets forth a resonating peal of thunder.
Well it seems leaning heavily into somehow almost a zombie like aspect like which I think is a really cool way of sort of portraying how everyone seems to almost mindlessly be going through the motions of a rather horrifying and twisted thing that they have all hd to suffer through here. Its a very good choice I think, and that description of the officers is just very visceral and it just almost haunts you with the image which I think is very well done.
In the midst of the deathly silence following the thunder, the feared, hoarse cry of ‘Over the top!’ can be heard, intermingled with the haunting, ghostly hoots of trench whistles, snapping weary troops out of their thoughts. After hesitating for a moment, they begin to clumsily climb the slimy, scarred mud slope to greet the tearing gunfire waiting for them.
That's a lovely ending to tag on there I think. Quite well chosen I'd say to just cap off the vibe established earlier to have the mindless charge happen as that becomes the inevitable way that things are going to reach the horrifying conclusion.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall I love the way you managed to bring this scene to life with just the description and the one single line of dialogue there. Its very well done and I think it achieves what it set out to do very well.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Kate
Points: 254288
Reviews: 4103
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