Defense de Fumer

Gaspar did not hear the sniper’s shot, only the “ping” of the bullet striking metal. He looked to the right to his friend Philippe in the trench beside him and all looked well. Then Philippe turned his way, smiled, and laid his head against the berm of the trench. His helmet leaned against the berm, the back of the helmet pivoting up to the night sky, and a trickle of blood began to flow along the side of Philippe’s cheek.

“Est-ce que tu vas bien?” asked Gaspar, but Philippe just sank further into the snow atop the berm and said nothing. He still clutched the burning cigarette he had just lit, the smoke curling around his face.

Gaspar and Philippe had been classmates at the Saint Jean Hulst in Versailles and had enlisted together in the Guards when war broke out in 1914. Neither had been to Berlin, but Gaspar promised his friend he would take him there. Now they were near the town of Ypres, in Belgium, with the French 8th Army, but closer to Paris than they were to Berlin.

“Don’t worry,” Gaspar had said to Philippe yesterday, “I always keep my promises.”

Gaspar moved toward his friend, lifted Philippe’s helmet from his face and rolled his friend’s body on its back. Philippe’s open eyes stared to the sky and his blood, no longer pushed by his heart, slowed to gravity’s pace, but no faster.

“Mon pote, ce qui vous est arrive?”

But Philippe did not answer.

A star shell burst above the trenches and the night turned into day as the phosphorous lit up the night sky. Gaspar peered over the berm of the trench and could see the Germans rising from their own trenches 100 yards away, stumbling out on to the snow-covered field separating the two armies and massing for a charge. A whistle blew behind him and he knew it as the signal to fall back to the next line of defense. He pointed his Lebel rifle toward the charging enemy, silhouetted against the white background, squeezed off two rounds, then grabbed his kit and looked toward his dead friend. The first snow of winter flaked against his dead friend’s face. A pack of Gauloises protruded from Philippe’s tunic pocket and Gaspar snatched the pack as he left the trench. Philippe had told him that smoking calms the nerves. Gaspar hoped that it would.