The lost father.

The Lost Father

Tommy was seventeen, and he was crawling through the dead. he feels sharp pain in his leg. His ears rang from the blast.

Mud clung to his skin like a second coat, thick and cold. Bullets cracked overhead, whining past his ears. Artillery thundered somewhere behind him, louder and closer with every heartbeat. His arms shook as he dragged himself forward through the bloodied muck of No Man’s Land. He looked for any friendly faces.

He didn’t know where Benny was. The air became lethal with fire. Men ran and rolled for cover as more and more explosions descended onto the wrecked earth. Few where left standing.

Voices screamed all around him — English, German, some not even words anymore — but it was all just noise now. The faces he passed were smeared in mud, their uniforms soaked through. Friend, enemy... he couldn’t tell the difference.

Then, through the smoke and ruin, he saw him — a man, shirtless, covered in grime, dragging bodies toward the trench. One by one he came back checking for life and then with out a word dragged them away. He ignored shouted commands even the cold. He wasn’t moving like a soldier. He wasn’t looking for cover — just bodies. Tommy still head ringing tries to move.

Tommy blinked, unsure if he was hallucinating.

The man turned and grabbed him next, lifting him like a sack of bones. Tommy tried to speak but black spots clouded his vision. The man's grip was strong, urgent. He dragged Tommy past barbed wire and blood, ducking low as mortar shells burst behind them.

The last thing Tommy heard was the screaming dying down. The silence.

He woke in a dimly lit medical shelter, lying on a thin cot. Pain shot up his leg — shrapnel, likely. Around him many men lay wrapped and mutilated after the big push,but no where did he see Benny. He swung his legs over the side and stood, hobbling forward. He made his way out hoping he din't have too look threw the bodies.

“Benny?” he called out, hoarse. “Benny!”

Rain was hammering the tarp above. He limped out into the wet, squinting.

“Tommy?”

He turned. Benny was there — soaked to the bone, crouched with a few others under a loose tarp. The two of them embraced, wordless, shivering.

“You made it,” Tommy whispered.

“Barely,” Benny said. “He dragged us in… that guy…”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know. Some shirtless bloke. Might’ve saved half our squad. No one knows where he went.”

One of the men under the tarp nodded. “I saw him — over east, by the body piles. Looking for someone.”

Tommy looked to Benny, and Benny looked back. They didn’t speak. They just started walking east.

They passed rows of blank-eyed men, soaked in silence. Some smoked. Some stared. No one stopped them.

Eventually, they saw him — the shirtless man, kneeling in the mud, turning over corpses.

The rain was washing streaks through the grime on his face. He looked older now — late forties, maybe. His eyes were distant. Empty.

Tommy and Benny approached slowly.

“What are you doing out here?” Benny asked. “It’s enemy dead. You shouldn’t be here.”

The man didn’t respond. He stood without a word and walked past them, back toward the trench.

They followed.

“We wanted to thank you,” Tommy said. “You saved us.”

No reply.

“He might be shellshocked,” Benny whispered. “He needs medics. And clothes.”

The man reached the trench’s edge and began climbing a ladder — out toward No Man’s Land.

“What the hell—?” Benny muttered.

Tommy and Benny grabbed him, pulling him down. He thrashed, fighting them off. A crowd started forming, murmuring.

Suddenly, the man seized Tommy’s face in both hands and looked into his eyes.

He spoke.

A string of words. Foreign. German.

Everyone went still.

Benny stepped back. “Shit. He’s one of them.”

Rifles came up.

Tommy fell back into the mud, stunned.

The man turned back to the ladder.

Tommy scrambled forward. “No—wait! You’ll be shot!”

He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him down again. “You can’t go back out there! They'll kill you on sight!”

Benny yanked Tommy back. “Are you insane? He’s the enemy!”

“He saved me!” Tommy shouted. “We can't just let him die. He saved us! Take him prisoner — I don’t care!”

Another soldier raised his rifle. “We don’t have room. Or rations.”

“Then take mine!”

No one moved.

Tommy turned to the man.

But he was gone.

Only the rain remained.

A Few Days Later…

The war shifted. Tommy’s side pushed forward and took the trench. The battlefield was quieter now. With the reinforcements they overwhelmed the enemy, but Tommy couldn't have peace of mind yet. He wandered the battle fields and bodies of the enemy trenches.

Tommy searched the dead but could not find the shirtless man.

Near the old trench line, he found something — a torn strip of shirt, soaked and rotting, and a metal tag, half-buried in the mud. It could be his. It lies near enough to where he got saved.

He showed the tag to an interpreter. He asked some of the captives and they talked for a bit.

The interpreter “Left his post abandoned a few days ago. He was looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“His sons. Two of them. Both conscripted. Been calling their names for days. Last anyone saw him, he was searching the dead outside the medical tents.”

The interpreter looked away.

“Then... he walked into No Man’s Land. And never came back” The interpreter handed a photo to Tommy and Benny. "Left this behind" on it a picture of a family of four. A father in his 40s and his wife with two boys. Standing at the entrance of a church. They were about the same age as Tommy.

Tommy stood there for a long time, the tag clenched in his hand. Benny added "he wandered all the way to our side and must have felt too sorry to leave us"

Tommy no longer felt anything but hollow.

He understood now: the lost man didn’t care about the cost of his actions — only the boys.

Too young to die in this hell.

He no longer fought for anything else