A Flight From Berlin

 A Flight From Berlin

Nicholas Pettross

               When you are up this high, you rarely hear the bullets, the shells, and the screams. The cacophony of death below becomes a spectacle, lines of ants maneuvering in defenses and encirclements. You don’t think of them as human at that point, only targets for your artillery. All you hear up here is the beat of the wind, the chug of machines, and the firing of massive Krupp cannons. Sometimes the loudspeakers play music, but that always gets drowned out when we enter the airspace above the Königsburg line.

                Another cruiser passed my view with the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs emblazoned on the large, grey balloon. I remember those first few years when the Russians didn’t have an air force. Those were magnificent days where one could admire the red sun and bloody earth. A barrage of Krupp 20-pounders shook our battleship and the Russian cruiser fell to the trench lines. It’s interesting to see the attitudes of the Landwehr, who fired a hailstorm of machine gun bullets into the falling airships. 

                “Orders from the Generalfeldmarschall, direct your Krupps to fire on the Russian tank column, Oberleutnant von Steinmarck!”

                “Ja, Oberst!” I ran to the firing deck and alerted my junior officers of the target. It was a rolling column of twenty or so pieces of Russian engineering. Not that Russian engineering is anything spectacular, but those tanks can do some major damage to our infantry positions. 

                Moments later the roar of the Krupps decimated the Russian tanks, sending shards of splintered metal and limbs up in a splash of fire and blood. I couldn’t hear the cries, but I saw a massive charge of Landwehr rushing towards the Russian lines, likely in response to our battleship’s barrage. Masses of men clad in Prussian blue were cut down, their bodies reduced to a tattered French tricolor. The charge halted and the men dispersed, jumping into the many holes created by artillery shells in the hellscape that lies between the two lines that run like a scar from the sea to Kraków.

                A few drops of water fell upon those of us standing on the firing deck. One of my officers turned to his friend and muttered in wonder, “God is in the rain.”

                I turned to this man, Joseph Daun, and stated simply before moving away, “God is dead and we here have killed him.”

                I wonder what Joseph Daun will think. Will he be offended or will he find some deeper meaning? It does not matter what one believes, look about you at the scene that plays out every day and night in the fields and skies of Eastern Europe and one will see that God is surely dead. Our machines have killed him, for good or ill, until the end of our lives. If the God of the Bible or the Qur’an or of any sort were concerned with us on Earth, we should have killed him many, many years ago. But no matter, all men and all things must die, and Joseph Daun is but one man unfortunate enough to be born in Prussia with a somewhat wealthy father.

                The battleship shook with a violent jerk and a great noise. This instance was followed by a quick and continuous succession of exploding shells that rocked the delicate carriage that suspended two hundred men and 50 guns high in the air. Suddenly the ship jerked down and everyone knew that our deaths were inevitable. Not only was our ship falling to the earth, but anyone could see that we would crash behind the Russian lines, a death sentence. We were fast approaching the blackness below when we learned once again that the Russians aren’t very much different than us. Bullets ripped into the ship until an impact finally arrived. A bullet grazed my arm before I was thrown forward and I entered the void.