Creative Writing: The Spirit Of World War I

Hello, this is Kelsey Maley reporting from a battlefield in France during spring of 1914. As you can most likely hear, the battle is booming behind us. The gunshots and cannon fires can be heard from miles away. From where I am standing one can also hear the cries and screams, and running horse hooves from the war below. Looking down we can see the khaki and grey uniforms either riding horses or hiding in trenches and with guns or swords. It is hard to concentrate on these men in uniforms because of the dirt and smoke covering the air around them. Walking up here is difficult because of the bumps in the ground. One may be able to feel the rumbling and shaking ground every time a cannon is fired. Each side is obeying the screams from their comandor

The sun was nowhere to be found the dark clouds combined with ash and smoke blotted out any form of light, destruction was everywhere. Wheat fields were ravaged by fires, and towns were reduced to rubble. The ground that was once dark brown soil was now churned into large masses of mud filled with the stench of death. In the mud trenches and foxholes were dug in which many men inhabited, not by choice but out of pure necessity.

Swords crashed against shields like a field of doors slamming shut in the wind. Arrows whistled through the air; a murder of tiny crows swarming above us vulnerable soldiers. The grunts of men impaled by hafts and sliced open by steel join the cacophony of a battle raging into dusk. Wet warmness would splash across me in response to the dying cries of my comrades as one after another of those we battle would push our shields apart and break the line. The ground was wet and sloppy, dried earth had been turned to slush by a rain that did not fall from the sky. The ground was rendered difficult to manoeuvre through, encumbered by the lifeless figures of soldiers now without the allegiance that lead them to a face in the dirt.

The rain was relentless. It turned blue skies to a bleak, wretched grey. The soldiers too, had once smiled like the sun, proud to be serving their country. Now, they could only see bullets in their future, striking through their body and leaving them to fall as a dead weight. Their fate had already been decided: six feet under in a wooden box.

The warm summer breeze was a nice change from yesterday's bitterly cold southerly wind. The sun was shining brightly and the lawn was shimmering green. Charlene was out on the veranda, watching her two babies frolicking around on the grass. Owen, dressed in an army green button-up shirt and knee-skimming shorts, was running around wreaking havoc on the ant nests by the oak tree.

You have successfully entered enemy territory. You and the other recon soldiers have crossed the distance of open plain, skirted the barbed wire, and are close to the enemy trenches. You all lie on your stomachs in the mud, rifles in hand. So far, the going is good. You don’t seem to have been spotted, and no shouts of alarm split the air.

only for an hour or two but 1 day a green light gas came threw

Hi Mom! Hope you're doing well. I'm sorry that I haven't been writing to you in a while, things have just been pretty hectic here. None of us have been getting any sleep around here because we are all stuck in these trenches and are always on guard. Every morning, we'd get up and look around. We always have to stay in the trenches unless our "leader" yelled "Over the top", which means the call to attack.

Jimin wakes up to the sound of explosions and fire. A thousand and some men meet their demise each day, and Jimin prays at night he’s not one of them. The war rages around him, and he gets off the make-shift bed to get changed into his gear to help out. He caps the patterned helmet and looks at himself in the mirror. His reflection stares back, sad and weary, a youth gone wrong. He smears camouflage onto his face, high on his cheekbones until there is nothing left of him but an empty vessel of war.

Shells fell past left and right. Mud rained down onto me. The trench was filling with water turning the red dirt to a brown sludge. Bullets whizzed past impacting into men’s chests. The machine guns pinned us down.

I know that it must be hard knowing that I am off to war. I am sorry that I didn't tell you that I was enlisting but I knew that you would be upset and maybe even be able to persuade me not to. I wish it didn't have to be like this, but our country needs me. I was placed in the trenches, there are many other people here. There are many other people here, more dead than alive. Their bodies lay for us to find as we run through no man's land. Yesterday I watch one of my comrades get to the other side, but then tripped and fell into barbed wire. We had to leave him behind. I got through making sure not to follow in his footsteps.

We marched. We marched shoulder to shoulder towards the battlefields. Towards our death. Hundreds of the British Army marched as one to fight for their country. Determination was the only emotion I could read on their faces; ready to battle.

Despite the rivalry over military power between Fan Dou and Xia Jiang, Jingyan did not think Xia Jiang was in any hurry to kill Fan Dou. Xia Jiang was the type of man who'd rather see his fallen opponents suffer. Ever ambitious, Xia Jiang would definitely forget about smaller preys once he locked his eyes on a bigger game. The surest way: "Xia Jiang will leave Fan Dou alone for a while if Fan Dou incriminates Mei Changsu."

“Excluding white students from multicultural education generate in them an ethnocentricity that creates difficulties for them to interact in global society. They come to see their culture as the norm or the only ‘right’ way and find it difficult to interact with other cultures in a healthy or successful manner (Nieto, 2010, p. 74).”

A moment from this novel that lingered in my mind is when Kropp said this, '"I've made up my mind," he says after a while, "if they take off my leg, I'll put an end to it. I won't go through life as a cripple."' This lingered in my mind a lot. Kropp was no older then the age of twenty when this happened. It is sad that a young man like Kropp would even ever have to have thoughts of suicide because their leg was blown off. The war inflicted a lot of damage on the young soldiers lives and seemed to not benefit anyones life. Another thing that lingered in my head is this, "will make a grand feed. About twenty yards from our dug-out there is a small house that was used as an officers' billet. In the kitchen is an immense fireplace with two ranges,