My great Grandfather was part of the French army during World War 1. Since he died young, I never actually got the chance to meet him. My father had always told me that he was quite a reserved man. In fact, he had essentially become a shut in during the later stages of his life. This wasn’t always the case, but… I suppose war does that to a person. This trend continued on throughout the rest of my family history. My grandfather died in WW2, and my father was part of the Vietnam War. He also died recently. It was a premature one, stemming from years and years of alcohol and tobacco consumption.
After the funeral reception, I visited the house that I grew up in, just for old times’ sake. As I walked into my old room, I found a worn-out looking journal sitting on my nightstand with a note attached to it:
“To Jack:”
“I know that you’ve never met your great grandfather before, and you probably don’t know much about him. It’s time to change that. This journal belonged to him. Open it to where I’ve inserted the bookmark and read until the last entry. As you go on, you may consider it to be ramblings of a madman, but I assure you that he was of sane mind when he wrote this. It’s time for you to know what he really went through. This kind of thing can’t be forgotten. If you’re reading this, then that means I’ve passed on, and that’s exactly how I planned for this to be. I never wanted to tell you this myself"
Despite the feeling of heavy melancholy weighing down on me, I decided to sit down and read the journal right there. I mean, this was essentially the last thing that my father had left me. I've translated the entries from French into English. This is what it read:
December 4th, 1916
The Germans can’t keep this up for much longer. I don’t know when they’re going to call off Verdun just yet, but I’m feeling that it must be soon. There’s been too much bloodshed on both sides. I say with confidence that this battle must be coming to its demise because they’re taking some of us off of the front lines. Not many, but just about thirty. I’m part of that thirty.
The lieutenant general is directing us towards a smaller village in the extreme north. We’re confused as to why anybody would try an invasion from there, since the place apparently remains in a state of perpetual blizzard. The Germans must be freezing out there. I suppose that we'll find out soon.
December 5th, 1916
We arrived yesterday to a massacre. The townsfolk, while not many to begin with, have all mostly been slaughtered. The few survivors have described the attack as somewhat strange, with the enemy being nearly entirely shrouded by the snow, and the gunfire seemingly coming from everywhere. However, we’ve been presented with a somewhat disconcerting revelation from one of the older survivors. He claimed that the entire time they were being bombarded by bullets, the air around them seemed to be filled with an unnatural shriek. Not the wind, mind you, but the air itself. The sounds weren’t travelling along, but remained stationary, as if the sources were standing right outside their homes. We don’t know what to make of this. Because of the uncertainty surrounding this whole situation, we can’t confirm the enemy yet, but we still have a pretty good idea as to who it is. They may be trying to draw troops away from Verdun. However… can the Germans even afford it? Every side is running low on man-power at this point. We’ve decided to move, as we think they may have headed south. We'll be leaving soon.
December 8th, 1916
I’ve been sitting in the infirmary for a while now. Everybody keeps asking me questions that I can't answer. However, I suppose that I should write down what happened, even if I don’t fully understand it myself. We moved later that day, not wanting to risk getting caught in the darkness. We must have trudged across the snowy plain for hours. We also had limited visibility, barely being able to see just meters in front of us. The only thing that we had were the directions coming form our general.
An indeterminate amount of time later, we started to hear the shrieking. I don't speak in exaggeration when I say that it was no sound of this Earth. Like the villager had described, the sources of the ungodly noises didn’t seem to move. They were all around us, but didn’t ever seem to shift in position or tone. And of course, we couldn’t see anything, everywhere we looked, we were met with walls of white. We started getting shot at only a few moments later. We all returned fire, but without any indication of where anybody was, we were essentially shooting blind. The incredibly worrying part was that our enemy didn’t seem to share this problem. With no protection of the trenches, we were going down at an alarming pace.
However, the assault eventually ceased. The shrieks had dissipated as well. Thinking that this meant the enemy was severely wounded and retreating, we pressed further on into the blizzard. About a few more minutes of southbound movement and we were bombarded again. The shrieks were also back now. We fired in every direction, trying to reload in between magazines as quickly as we could. However, our hands were so frozen that we couldn’t retaliate quickly enough. We were soon down from thirty to about twelve. In the midst of the carnage, I could make out a shape slowly staggering towards us through the snow. I must have emptied my entire clip into the entity, but it just wouldn't go down.
The thing continued making its way towards us, despite now being fired at by all of our men. We could see chunks of its flesh being ripped off, but it never seemed to be bothered.
As it got to within about 10 meters of our formation, it stopped, and we could see it clearly.
I suppose that you could call it human... but just barely. It was a man, stripped of all clothing, with skin that was charred to blackness all over. Expect for the face, that is. His face was normal enough, save for a few bullet wounds in the temple. The "man" squatted down in front of us and began to grin, gesturing for us to come forwards.
I glanced at my fellow soldiers, and they all shared the same look of sheer terror as I probably did. At this point, the gunshots had ceased, but none of us dared to move towards the strange man. We stood there for what felt like hours, before the man's grin faded and was instead replaced with an expression of sheer hatred. He opened his mouth wide and started shrieking. This time, it was so loud that we all had to cover our ears. It felt like our brains would explode if we didn't.
I turned away for a second, looking back to see the man running away from us at a speed that should have been too fast for any normal human. But he was obviously NOT a normal human.
We decided to turn back that instant. There was no way in hell that we were following that abomination of humanity into whatever gruesome fate it wanted to lead us into.
We made the immensely difficult trek backwards, only to come across something that was definitely not there before. There were now pikes lodged into the ground, impaling German Soldiers through the mouth.
However... against all logic... they were still alive, flailing their arms and making desperate eye contact with us. We considered helping them, but there was really nothing we could have done. This was because the burnt man was also back, now standing at the bottom of one of the pikes. Again, he started motioning for us to come towards.
I couldn't stand the sight of him, so I turned around. However, as soon as I did, the gunshots came back. I tried my best to avoid both the man and the bullets as I started running frantically through this snowy hell, trying to return back to the world that I knew. As grim as conventional warfare is, this was something else entirely.
I don't know how long I ran, but eventually I found myself in another village, where I was taken in. I couldn't locate the rest of my team, and as shameful as it sounds... I didn't really care. I was out of there, away from the gunfire, away from the shrieks... away from that man.
Eventually, I was found and put into the infirmary for treatment. I was suffering from severe hypothermia as well as three bullet wounds. There was only one member of my unit who made it back with me. However, he was catatonic, unable to provide the officers with any semblance of what had happened to us.
It's not that I was able to fare much better. I couldn't begin to describe the events that had just transpired either. In fact, I don't really want to think about it anymore.
December 19th, 1916
I'm back in my own home now, being deemed unable to continue on in the war. I've just been informed that we've won the battle of Verdun. It's a sad victory for me. As much as I'd love to keep serving my country... I just can't risk running into that man again. You see, on my last day in the infirmary, I saw him. He was walking amongst the troops, but it was unquestionable. I'd never forget that face. He looked like a regular man, due to the fact that he seemed to have gained his skin back somehow. But I know better than that. It's all just a trick. I tried telling my superiors about it, but they wouldn't listen. They think I'm insane. Maybe I am. But in any sense, I'm not going back out there... that thing is waiting for me.
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