“What the hell am I doing here?” Mitchell asked the empty air of the desolate, frigid woods of France as his boots crunched across more frozen earth and brittle sticks.
The year was 1914. His age was 16. He’d told the authorities it was 18, so he could do his part for his beloved country of England.
That had been over a month ago, and since then Mitchell had been shuttled between bunkers and barracks and trenches and tents, and not once had he ever felt like he was actually part of the ‘Great War’ that had supposedly needed him so desperately.
Even now, he had been assigned to a scouting mission… which was secret military code for ‘fuck off into the woods until we can think of something for you to do’.
It was December 24th, it had to be at least 11:30 at night, but it definitely didn’t feel like the night before Christmas. Didn’t look much like it either.
Mitchell was still only a boy, he could still remember Christmas mornings before the war began. Dashing downstairs in his pyjamas to see what wonderful toys Father Christmas had brought for him, while his father gave a knowing wink to his mother… the smell of his father’s tobacco puffing out of his old clay pipe, the sound of his mother twittering away about the neighbours and their garden arrangements…
Mitchell looked around himself. For miles around him, all he could see were trees. Dead, skeletal, frozen trees without a single leaf to be seen.
It was winter, alright. The absolute dead of winter, with not a single present to be seen, nor a single bite of a roast dinner.
Mitchell sighed and kept walking.
He’d tried to believe in the war… he’d tried to believe it was all worth it, but not only had he yet to see any real ‘action’… but he didn’t even want to. He wasn’t even sure if he was capable of killing anyone, the thought of it deeply worried him. He’d only enlisted because he’d been told he was needed… now here he was, in the supposed ‘thick of it’, and there wasn’t a single German to be seen.
And that was another thing. All his squad-mates had stories of the Germans, they sounded like monsters from some childhood fairy-story, with glowing red eyes and giant ugly teeth and horrible roaring voices.
Mitchell had met a German, before the war had even began. He’d been a friend of Mitchell’s father, and he’d seemed very nice. Okay, Mitchell had only been five-years-old at the time, but he still had fond memories of him all the same.
Were the Germans really as bad as everyone said…?
Snap.
Mitchell froze where he was.
That hadn’t been from his boot. It sound had come from ahead of him.
He immediately unslung his rifle and gripped it tight, still not sure of how he felt about holding a lethal weapon in his hands.
He stepped forwards slowly, being as careful as he could not to make any noi-
Snap.
Now that had been from his own boot.
Almost instantly something jumped up from a few feet in front of him, a man with demonic eyes, clad in a huge grey overcoat, a fearsome looking rifle clutched tight in his claw-like hands.
Mitchell pulled his own gun up to his face, and shouted at the man.
“Drop it! Drop your weapon!” Mitchell shouted, his heart pounding in his chest as he stared down the man pointing his own rifle back at him.
“Lass es fallen! Lass deine Waffe fallen!” The German soldier shouted back at him, refusing to comply.
“Please!” Mitchell shouted, his hands shaking as he fought to keep his rifle steady. “I don’t want to have to shoot you!”
“Bitte! Ich will dich nicht erschießen müssen!” The enemy shouted back, trembling with barely-concealed hatred as he glared at Mitchell through the sights of his gun.
Mitchell screwed his eyes shut, and began to tighten his grip on the trigger, readying himself to either be killed… or to take a life for the first time. The German soldier, standing opposite him, did the same.
Then, a moment before the triggers were pulled… there was a sound.
“Bon-joow!” A small voice peeped, startling both Mitchell and the enemy soldier. They both opened their eyes and looked down… and saw a small yellow fuzzy thing standing between them, glancing up in the air and looking back and forth between the two of them.
A fluffy pony.
In the middle of a French battlefield.
In the Great War.
“Je suis Antoine! Nouweau papas?” It asked both of them in a baby-like voice. Mitchell looked at it, he could detect a stray word of French in it’s inane babbling, but couldn’t interpret much of what it was actually saying. The German soldier opposite him seemed equally confused.
Then, Antoine grimaced, his face screwed up tight… and he farted.
Mitchell, despite the stress of the war, despite the tension of almost shooting the German soldier (or potentially being shot himself), despite everything… started to laugh. The German joined in too, his once fearsome face seeming remarkably more boyish once the guns were lowered.
“Nu-un! Nun wiwes d’Antoine!” Antoine whined, blushing in shame at the trumpting toot of a fart he let out.
“Zu viel Käse, Französisch?” The German said, laughing as Antoine tried to hide his blushing face behind his hooves, only for his rear to let out another honk of a fart.
“Bloody hell!” Mitchell said, stepping back from the stink. “It’s as bad as one of your gas shells!” He said to the German, between peals of laughter.
“Hrmph!” The yellow fluffy pony snorted. “Antoine te donnew CACAS-DÉSOLÉE!!!”
He turned, pointing his rear at them, and lifted his tail.
“Oh no you don’t!” Mitchell shouted, stepping forwards and swinging his foot at the French-speaking fluffy’s quivering anus, booting it hard and launching it into the air.
“NU-U-UN!!!” He wailed as he soared through the sky, his torrent of ‘cacas-désolée’ erupting from his anus in a jet of brown liquid, propelling him forwards hard enough that when he landed head-first on the ground, there was an audible crack that definitely did not come from any twigs.
Mitchell burst out laughing again, as did the German soldier, and the two took a moment to look at each other.
Mitchell had no idea what he’d been seeing before. The person standing opposite him was barely any different from himself. He looked to be the same age, with the same scared look in his eyes. All while Mitchell looked at the German soldier, he did the same in return. Both could see each other for what they truly were at last.
Boys. Scared, lost boys who just wanted to go home.
“Mitchell.” Mitchell said, holding out his gloved hand. The German looked nervously at it, then took it in his own and shook it.
“Karl.” He replied. The two boys looked at each other, and shared a momentary smile. A flicker of kinship passed between them, and a sliver of warmth filled their empty hearts for just a moment.
But neither one could forget where they were. They had no intent of killing each other, not anymore… but they didn’t know that about the other. Mitchell dared not turn his back on Karl, in case it provided a perfect target for him. Karl, meanwhile, felt the same about Mitchell.
The two looked at each other, their moment of compassion and friendship suddenly fading and being replaced by an increasing coldness, as cold as the blistering winds that blew between the trees all around them.
But, before anything could be done, before a single move could be made… both of them heard something. A voice. No, multiple voices, carried through the trees by the wind.
“Silent night… holy night… all is calm… all is bright…”
“Nur das traute hochheilige Paar… Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar…”
“Sleep in heavenly peace…”
“Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh…”
Karl and Mitchell looked at each other, then out through the trees. They could see lights… and people moving. But not running, or charging, or shooting… they were just… walking.
Their uniforms didn’t even seem to match. There were the Triple Alliance, and then there were the Triple Entente, all mingling together. And then the two boys heard… laughing! And singing! And… and just talking…
Mitchell and Karl looked at each other again… then walked through the trees together, heading out to the battlefield with their weapons lowered, neither having fired a single shot, or having taken a single life.
Neither of them had even realised the time.
Both had been walking for so long, the clocks had ticked their way all the way around to midnight.
It was December the 25th, 1914.
A day when, just for once, the bloodshed would stop.
Instead, hands would be shook, hair would be cut, football would be played, photographs would be taken, and unforgettable memories would be forged.
“Frohe Weihnachten.” Karl said.
“Merry Christmas.” Mitchell replied.
Joyeux Noel.
