No Man's Land

By evolution-500

Genre: Drama/Supernatural

Disclaimer: Wonder Woman is a character and property owned by DC Comics. I do not own this character.

WARNING: This story contains references to violence, coarse language, disturbing themes and imagery. Reader discretion is advised.

"In valor there is hope."

- Tacitus

I will never forget the first time I saw her.

It was on November fourth in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and eighteen, when I saw a miracle.

At the time, I was a young Private for the British Army, a boy barely older than nine and ten, and it was in the trenches of No Man's Land where I had been given my first taste of war.

I had joined on account of my father and his father before him, both proud veterans who had served King and Country on the frontlines.

As a young man that came from a strong military tradition, it was expected of me to follow the example of my forefathers, so when the call came for me to perform my duty, I had been all-too happy to oblige.

I do not regret my service to his Majesty, but looking back on it now, in many ways, I can only shake my head at the naïve fool that I had once been, and had I been given the foresight of what I know now, my courage and willingness would most assuredly have waned.

I came into the war thinking that it would be a path to honor and glory.

When I found myself on the frontlines, all that I beheld was horror.

No amount of preparation in the world could have prepared me for what lied ahead.

When my unit and I had arrived at No Man's Land all those many years ago, it had been the smell in the air that I noticed immediately.

It had been an awful smell, a horrible combination of a seeming endless array of odors that coalesced into a pungently lethal cocktail that had been nauseating, so foul that even when we tried not to inhale through our nostrils that we were able to practically taste it.

It was a smell like gunpowder, cigarette smoke, burning wood and rotting meat mixed with stinking mud, lingering gas, wet clothes, unwashed bodies and wet feces all combined together to produce an overpowering stench.

Christ almighty, I remember how every time my unit and I drew nearer to the front, the more overwhelming the smell became, so much so that every man there was trying not to throw up. I will admit that I was among those unable to keep their food down at the time.

The main latrines used to be located behind the lines, but soldiers in the frontlines, I had later discovered, had to dig small waste pits in their own trenches in order to do their business, resulting in the air perpetually smelling of shit.

I don't know what ill-preconceived notions of a battlefield I had at the time, but I vividly remember what I saw.

To say that it was horrible was putting it mildly; nothing could have prepared me for the awful truth of what war actually was.

The first time that I gazed upon the atrocity known as "No Man's Land", I had been completely unprepared for the sheer sensory bombardment that followed.

I saw a sky that was perpetually dark and grey, often filled with smoke.

I saw a long, narrow, smoky and muddy desolate stretch of land with numerous blasted trees, some barely little more than stumps, while the rest of the area was stripped clean. The land itself looked flattened, battered, and scorched, with numerous flooded craters of varying sizes caused by the constant shelling.

In a few of those craters, I saw the half-buried forms of men, some of whom looked as if they were sleeping, while others had expressions perpetually locked as frozen screams.

Numerous areas were lined with barbed wire entanglements, but in some sections, I had been able to make out a number of corpses caught within them, along with a few wriggling figures.

I don't know if those latter had still been alive and were feebly trying to get out, or if the wind had caused their remains to shake and tremble.

Regardless, the mere sight of them had chilled me.

A few of the bodies were still fresh, while others had been left for so long that flies were buzzing around them.

I saw bits of leg, a pair of dismembered arms, a head, and a disembodied torso, I'm guessing the results of either shelling, tank fire or the results of stepping on a mine, I know not which.

I saw a dead horse lying rotting on an overlooking hill, its face stripped down to the very bone, revealing a horrible leering and grinning skull that wriggled with maggots.

I heard airplanes flying overhead, buzzing around like oversized flies.

I heard machine gunfire and explosions in the distance, accompanied by the shouts of commanding officers urging soldiers on into battle, along with the screams of men dying by the droves.

The trenches were even worse.

Rats and lice were our only companions in those hellish pits along with the cold, and through them came no shortage of problems.

Rats were a constant nuisance that had to be dealt with on a daily basis. They were bold little fuckers, often feeding on whatever scraps of food or dead bodies they could get their greasy little paws on, and far too comfortable for my liking in the quarters that us soldiers had to build for ourselves.

I vividly remember how one fat bastard that I had nicknamed "Monty" after an old schoolyard bully of mine would always crawl all over me and my mates whenever we attempted to sleep. Monty and his pals had used to scratch and bite us all the fucking time, resulting in a few of us either staying awake or having a buddy watch over us to keep the damn things from getting close.

We would wave him away, shout at him, curse at him, even at times shoot at him, but ol' Monty and his bastard friends were wily ones, alright.

They were everywhere, some so large and fat that they seemed bigger than our boots, some even brave enough to steal food from men's pockets and right from our food storage areas.

Some had even been large enough to eat and kill a man, usually if they were injured; I had seen it happen a number of times to a wounded brother-in-arms. All it took was one rat, and if one wasn't careful, two or three more would join in.

Two to three rats would always be found on or around a dead body, always eating through the eyes first. Let me tell you, finding the body of a mate lying across from you with a rat or two protruding out from the eye sockets gave me enough perspective and awareness to realize that, even at our "safest", danger was always near.

Few things spooked me more than the knowledge of being eaten alive while one was asleep, and for that reason, I made it a point to always stay vigilant and to never, EVER sleep for any longer than I needed to.

Rats brought all manner of troubles to our unit, including - but not limited to - lice. We were all cold, starving, wet, tired, and on top of the little buggers that would constantly skitter around, we became itchy all over. Some of the lads became ill, for lice carried numerous diseases that ended up killing us by the thousands.

We were constantly killing the little bastards day and night, especially at bomb shelters and in the bunkers.

Every day was a struggle to survive - whether it was the bullets passing over our heads, the explosions going off, the mud that would constantly coat our uniforms and bury men alive, it was the closest thing to a living nightmare that one could ever imagine.

Me and the rest of the lads were certain that we were going to die at No Man's Land - death was a constant presence for us soldiers, and as much as we tried to joke with each other on occasion, if only to distract ourselves from the horrific inevitable, the ability to laugh and smile became harder with each passing day.

Finally, there came a point where we stopped laughing and smiling altogether, and with it, hope had died.

Let me tell you, lads, there's nothing more sobering a thought that doom was just right around the corner waiting for you, and at any moment it would be your turn to be collected by the Reaper.

We were all God-fearing men, and we had prayed daily for salvation.

We had all wanted this war to end, and likewise, we had all wanted to go back to the land of the living, to come back as men once more, not remain in this black stygian nightmare of unending conflict and restless nights.

But alas, such was the way of war, for it cared not what we wanted - only that the price of blood be paid.

And many a fine man had paid at No Man's Land - in bodies, in blood, and in sanity, and for many years, those awful days still remained with us ever after, a tally far too high and costly, far too horrible and degrading for anyone to even comprehend.

We had fought tooth and claw against the enemy, against the elements, and against our inner demons, a perpetual and turbulent cycle of violence and bloodshed with neither side able to progress, locked in a stalemate.

I do not know what the lads in my unit felt in those days, but speaking for myself, I was frightened.

I knew that I was going to die.

The question was how.

Would it be a German bullet, bomb, gas or shell that got me? Would it be a blood-soaked pool? Would I be consumed by the earth itself, or would it be by Monty and his lice-infested brethren?

It was during early November that I had found myself at my lowest point.

I had lost my best friend, Paul Adams, to a landmine. The two of us had known each other since we were children, and when we had entered the Royal Army, we had promised each other to look out for one another no matter what happened.

Paul used to have been an easy-going lad, a jokester who always used to make us laugh even at our most dour.

One evening, he had failed to turn up from his patrol, and for many hours, none of the men in my unit knew what had happened to him.

It was only two days later that we all made the...grisly discovery.

Paul's death had affected me the most out of all the other lads; I had known him since we were children, and in many ways, we were like brothers, and the idea of never being able to listen his corny jokes and laugh...it felt like hope had died.

Things were going from bad to worse with each passing moment, and more than once, I had contemplated taking my own life.

It was an early colorless morning that I found myself at a crossroads, questioning everything.

Four of my friends had been gunned down by the German soldiers, and even worse, the villagers of Veld, which lay on the other side of No Man's Land, were being held captive and used as slaves.

At the rate we were progressing - I use the term "progressing" loosely - the village and all of its inhabitants would have been razed to the ground, and I had been too powerless to do anything about it.

My spirits were so low that I hadn't wanted to even continue; every fiber of my being was screaming for me to leave, to leave the mud and war behind, to return home and never look back.

And yet, duty compelled me to stay, lest I would live with the shame of being called a traitor and a coward.

I was discordant in my thoughts, troubled and looking for answers, yet unable to find any.

Why keep on going? What use was it to delay the inevitable? What purpose did I serve in a war that cared not for the many souls that it grinded up by the hundreds and thousands on a daily basis? Why was this war allowed to go on for so long, and why did so many good men, women and children have to suffer?

What justification was there for conflict, where men could become monsters and hurt and kill their fellow man in the most horrible of ways?

Even worse, I found myself suffering a severe lapse in faith.

I had believed myself a devout Protestant going into the war, but words fail to convey how utterly monstrous it all was; there had been nothing noble nor rational about the conflict, in seeing friends ripped apart.

I had wanted to believe that there was Divine justice, and I had been praying daily and used to read my Bible every night. The damned rats had torn it to shreds, and since then, my faith had been tested every waking moment.

Days would pass like the very shells being discharged, and more than once, I had found myself questioning His presence, for what kind of god would justify such horrible death and destruction?

With food rations dwindling, it reached the point where I actually started to believe that had God abandoned us, if not was collectively punishing us for our hubris.

So many questions and doubts assailed me from every direction, and I knew not what to do.

What did I fight for? What was there to make me keep going?

I hadn't slept for two whole nights, and when morning came, my head had felt groggy, the effects of sleep deprivation and sickness having taken its toll on my being.

I had been ready to end it all right there and then...until I saw her.

A woman had stood on the top bank of the battlefield with her back facing me and the rest of the trenches, her hair long, flowing and lustrous black, so dark that it stood out from the grey fog.

Startled, I had rubbed my eyes before checking again, initially believing her to be a trick of the light, but her vision never dissipated.

She had been tall and imposing, a striking woman with Mediterranean sun-kissed skin and a commanding otherworldly presence, unblemished by any of the elements, untouched by the mud, rats and lice.

She had been a vision that had looked so out of place from the muck and grime that had long become accepted as the norm, and for a long while, I had been uncertain if she were a dream or an illusion cast by a deliriously ill mind.

Granted, there had been female volunteers, but this woman, though, she had been something far more than any nurse. She had clearly not been a soldier, yet I would be reluctant to say that she had been a civilian either.

She had worn what looked distinctly like Greek-styled armor consisting of a red leather bodice that had been connected to a blue leather skirt, both of which had been seemingly held together by a golden belt around the waist. On both legs, she wore a set of matching boots that had a series of adjustable greaves, while on one arm she wore a matching armband, her wrists bound by a pair of metallic braces.

On her back, I saw a large round shield and a sword, along with a rope that glowed a strikingly goldish hue.

I never saw the woman's face, but it had been her bearing that had impressed me the most; there had been a deeply driven, steely firm and unyielding aura that emanated from her, one that spoke of fearless determination and courage.

Her resolve had been both mesmerizing and inspiring, so much so that it had made me stand taller in attention.

She had been focused on something ahead of her, and for several minutes I had been staring transfixed on the mysterious woman, uncertain what to do.

But then she took a step forward, moving toward the German lines, making no utterance as she started to walk.

I remember hearing some murmurs from the lads in my unit, some saying, "Watkins, what are you doing?!", but I had ignored them and followed that woman up the ladder.

I don't know what madness had possessed me to have boldly climbed up from the trenches, but I had felt compelled to follow.

None of the lads had seen the woman, as far as I could tell - I was the only one of my unit to have noticed, though how it had been so had left me puzzled.

Doctors proclaimed that she had been a hallucination, but she had been real, I tell you!

Too many people had died already in this damned war, and I had been determined to not let another soul be claimed.

I remember vividly calling out to her, trying to catch up and warn her of the danger that she had been in, but the woman had seemingly not heeded my warnings, and what had started off as a slow walk had turned into a light jog.

I saw her raise up an arm and sparks shot off from her gauntlet, the mere sight of it causing me to stop calling out altogether.

I hadn't known what to make of it at first, but then I saw her raise up her other arm and saw the same happen again, and again, and again.

I couldn't believe it - she had been deflecting bullets with nothing but her wrist braces!

The woman had then started to increase the speed of her jog into a full-fledge run, and the more she progressed, the more awe-filled and inspired I became.

I felt emboldened with each step that she took, and with each step forward, the more I found my hope and vigor renewed itself.

Christ almighty, I remember how much my lungs had burned from the exertion. My feet and legs were sore, and my face was burning hot and damp with sweat, but no matter how much I ran, the woman had been far out of my reach.

She had moved with a speed that seemed impossible to fathom, a vision that darted and flickered in and out of the mist like a ghost, gliding past the bodies and razor-wired entanglements with surprising ease, leaping great distances in single bounds.

Once or twice, she had raised up her arms, and I saw sparks flying off of her braces in different directions.

I remember hearing Germans shouting something before unleashing everything in their arsenal, and I had felt bullets skirt past me.

Dirt flew in the air from every angle, much of it landing and covering my already filthy uniform, but hope never wavered as long as that woman stood her ground, using nothing but her shield to block out sniper and machine gunfire.

I had retaliated and met my attackers in kind head on, picking them off one by one with my rifle while also providing a few cover shots for the woman as I had heard the cacophony of gunfire and explosions from every side, all of which drowned out the screams and shouts of the men that fought.

Occasionally I had glimpses of the woman doing the impossible, from crashing into towers at impossibly tall heights to tearing through tanks as if they were nothing than paper, the sight so fantastical that at first I had wondered if it had all been a dream.

Soon, more Germans started to fall, and as I turned to briefly glance over my shoulder, my heart started to beat faster in encouragement.

I heard the rallying cries of thousands, and sure enough, I found myself joined by every soldier on the battlefield as they had all started to climb up onto the embankment and joined in the fray.

Nothing had been more inspiring a sight than seeing all my brethren soldiers take up arms and mustering up the courage to push forward, regardless of injury. Regardless of possible death.

Arm in arm we had fought on, picking up those who had slipped into the mud, and for every soldier that had fallen, we had fought twice as hard in order to ensure that they had been avenged.

We had pushed forward together, eliminating every German soldier that stood in our way, driving their forces back.

Many men had perished along the way, but that had only served to fuel our resolve to see things to the end.

Many men had ended up suffering severe injuries, but that had not deterred them.

For the first time in ages, I had started to realize that I hadn't been alone, and I had started to believe, and hope.

Once we had reached the other end of No Man's Land, we had liberated the village of Veld of German occupation, and once it had been all over, exhaustion had set in.

I don't know what had happened to that mysterious woman - I had searched high and low for her, and as far as I know, she had never fallen.

And yet, none of my fellow soldiers had seen her, either; only I had witnessed her strength and bravery.

I had ended up bedridden for a time with a cough and a nasty fever, and all I could think about was that woman.

A few of the soldiers and doctors had assured me that she had been an illusion and had been reluctant to say anything, but I had not been so convinced.

After all, the destroyed tanks and towers had been proof enough in my mind, despite the assertions saying otherwise.

Once the war had ended, I had returned home a decorated veteran.

I had married the love of my life and together we had three wonderful children.

I had a successful career as a teacher, and I couldn't have been any happier.

Since that time, though, I couldn't help thinking about that woman and what had become of her.

Whether she had been an angel or Greek goddess looking out for soldiers on the battlefield, I do not know, but regardless of such questions, I was grateful for her presence and intervention, and can only thank God for allowing such a miracle to walk the earth.

Since that encounter, I have heard rumors of her presence in various countries for some years now; there have been tales of a warrior woman helping and defending the innocent, an angel inspiring goodness and bravery wherever she travelled.

Whoever and whatever she is, I hope that she continues to exist for many more years to come, even after I'm gone, for the world needs to be reminded that honor, goodness, mercy, compassion and heroism exists still.

Nowadays, I look upon this age with worry.

Though much progress has been made in civil rights and technological innovation, though I have fought for King and Country, I do not recognize this world compared to the one that I fought for.

On every side, I see discord and confusion.

I see violence, bigotry, oppression, and hatred rising from every corner, perpetuated by multiple sides.

I see staggering levels of ignorance and, at its most extreme, stupidity in place of common sense.

I see evil making its presence known, using the ignorant, the stupid and the good-intentioned as platforms in order to make their mark on the world, perpetrating more ignorance, more despair, and more suffering.

I see countries and territories oppressing their own people, promoting ethnic cleansings and hatred under the guise of religious doctrine.

I see countries at war and wars threatening to escalate even further and spill into other regions, with the good and damned alike being drawn in from every corner like fish caught in a whirlpool.

I see conflicts without end, perpetuated in endless cycles where more bodies and stronger, deadlier weapons are thrown into the mix, resulting in more horror and bloodshed.

I see a world standing on a knife's edge, and I cannot help but worry for the future, for humanity, for society, and for the world at large.

Everything these days feel as if they are becoming bleaker with each passing moment, and I cannot help feeling as if it is all building toward a final crescendo that threatens to plunge the world into total darkness.

You probably believe me senile, perhaps rolling your eyes with dismissal at the ramblings of an old man, but heed my warning, dear reader, otherwise, it may be you who finds himself in my position in No Man's Land all those years ago, on the receiving end of a bullet, or worse.

It may be you, or your friends, or your family that finds themselves at their lowest, and may Heaven help you when it does.

But my message to you is do not fear, dear reader, for even in our darkest hours, hope remains, and I pray that hope will remain with us still for as long as we draw breath, and for as long as we are able to dream.

As long as we believe, as long as we never forget our humanity, along with our capacities for goodness, honor, courage, and mercy, we can and will survive.

We can become better as individuals, as people, and as societies, and for that reason, I pray that the Wonder Woman will be there with us every step of the way in order to ensure such a thing and catch us when we fall.

* * * * *

Author's Notes: And that concludes this story. It is no secret that I love the first "Wonder Woman" movie. I loved the No Man's Land scene and the soundtrack for it so much, if only because it did an excellent job at conveying her heroism, if not heroism in general. It was one of the few superhero movies that I can recall that had made me feel some measure of hope and inspiration as a fan. Lately, I've been feeling rather troubled by things that I've been seeing online and in social media, and because of that, I couldn't help thinking about that scene.

So, as a form of catharsis, I suppose, I wanted to write this story.

I hope you liked this. If not, thank you for at least taking the time to read it.

Shout out to Stuff3 for his suggestions and LunarAquarius for her help - thank you so much, guys. You absolutely rock!

Stay safe and healthy, everyone! :)