Arnold

Pronouns: He/Him
Sexuality: Straight


Well you see, this mask, it’s defective. See, I was in the trenches - let me tell you about that first so you can get the whole picture. The Great War had started in 1914, you see, and I was sent off to go fight pretty early on - early November of that year, as a matter of fact. So they shipped me across the Channel to France, and all the while they were saying the war would be over by Christmas. I was only eighteen at the time, you see, and I believed every word of it. I went off to France with a dream of becoming a hero, and I must say I was wholly unprepared for what was to come. The training wasn’t too hard, but then I got out there and by god, it was hellish. At first it was just digging and shelling and then more digging, more shelling, and then even more digging. Dig, dig, dig! I don’t think I ever got all the dirt out from underneath my fingernails. Although I’m not quite sure if any of the dirt I’ve got under there now is from those first few months, if I’m being honest. It all blends together eventually. Anyway, digging. We all dug trenches through the countryside and by god, it was horrible. My hands are still dirty and my feet haven’t been warm since 1914. The shells, too - those were terribly frightening at first, although really once you’ve spent enough time on the front lines the explosions start to sound more like background noise. It was almost worse when they stopped, you see, because everything would go silent and oh, the suspense was awful!

They said it would be over by Christmas, you see. What a load of rubbish that was. They kept saying that, year after year, and all the while we were sitting in the trenches in France and wishing it would all just end. Over by Christmas! I can’t believe I fell for that. But either way, it dragged on and on, and every so often we’d line up and go over the top to charge Jerry in his trench, and that was never a pleasant experience. I managed to survive each time, but I was the exception, you see, not the rule. We’d take up our guns and go over the top and run across No-Man’s Land, and the Huns would shoot at us from their trenches, and as they were shooting us we’d also have to dodge barbed wire and shell craters full of mud. I fell into quite a few of those craters, you see. It might have saved my life more than once, keeping me down and out of the line of fire.

I don’t know how I survived as long as I did, really, but I did, and at some point some idiot decided to start using poisonous gas as a weapon, can you believe it? It started with chlorine, nasty greenish stuff, and we were issued these masks to protect ourselves. They worked fine at first, you see, although let me tell you, they didn’t help much with the fear of gas, only the gas itself. It was horrifying. We sat there in our trenches and prayed that the gas wouldn’t get us. It wasn’t the only thing we feared, mind you, but it was - for me at least - certainly one of those fears that lingers at the forefront of one’s mind.

The gases started getting worse, you see, and more and more deadly. They kept giving us new masks, and I got this one I’m wearing now - they called it a small box respirator. Well, they issued these masks, showed us how to put them on, and I didn’t have to use mine until Passchendaele, 1917. I’m sure I would’ve had to use it sooner, but I was out of commission for a while; I’d gotten a bit of shrapnel to the face, you see, and I had to spend a bit of time recovering. It was nice, being away from the trenches, although I could still hear the sounds of the shells and the gunfire. But then I was sent back, and this battle had to be the worst yet, you see. All of them seemed utterly pointless, but this one was particularly bad. The trenches were flooded; if a man fell into the mud with all his gear he could drown, you see, because it was so thick and the gear was so heavy. I saw it happen to a mate of mine. Nicholas Browning. Great soldier, excellent at frying lice. Anyway, we were all living in these awful muddy trenches. I think there’s still mud in my boots, as a matter of fact. And it was awful enough with all that, and then one day Jerry unleashed a particularly nasty gas attack. This one was mustard gas, you see, and it leaves these awful blisters all over your skin. A mask will protect your face and your lungs, but not the rest of you.

Well, it turned out the mask they gave me was a defective one. I found that out the hard way, you see: there was this attack, mustard gas, and I put my mask on just like all the other men, and it didn’t help me in the slightest! I was breathing in the gas even with my mask on, and it was just awful. Made life in the trenches seem like a walk in the park. I was incapacitated right then and there, in the middle of No-Man’s Land. I fell to my knees and started coughing and choking.

Now, mustard gas isn’t as deadly as chlorine and phosgene - not unless you breathe in a lot of it, or if you can’t get any sort of treatment. Well, I breathed a lot, you see, and I couldn’t get treatment either, not while I was laying in a shell hole in No-Man’s Land. I sat there and I waited for a medic to come save me, but it never happened, and I sat there, choking and dying, for around two days before I finally succumbed to all the burns. It felt like my lungs were on fire, you see, but at first I still didn’t think I’d die, seeing as mustard gas isn’t an effective killer, but then I got worse and worse, and the medics didn’t find me, and the next thing I knew I was dead, all because I was issued a defective mask. The filter simply didn’t work, and it killed me. I think I’m one of the more fortunate ones, though, at least out of those of us who were killed by gas. I met a few poor souls in the afterlife who’d been attacked with mustard gas and lingered for weeks before they died, you see, so I imagine I was lucky, only having to suffer through two days of it, and thankfully the pain stopped once I died. All these burns and blisters no longer hurt, and my lungs do feel quite alright aside from the wheezing, although I suppose a ghost has no need to breathe anyway. But, in any case, there you have it. That’s the story of my defective mask - unless you’d like more detail, that is.