How are the mighty fallen...? [Open]

[Rhys Bevan]

Staff Sergeant Rhys Bevan opened one eye and let out an instant raport of vicious spluttering and coughing. Tasting dried blood on his lip, Rhys sat up gingerly and instantly wished he hadn't. A searing pain ripped through his body and sent him sprawling back onto his side like some kind of puppet, gasping in agony. He looked up pathetically to see a portly doctor standing over him sympathetically, flanked by two young medical orderlies and a British Captain who stood stiff and majestically, compared to the more bumbling figures of his companions. Rhys attempted to salute to the figure before realising that he had almost no feeling in his arm at all.

"Don't move, Sergeant," said the doctor carefully. "You have multiple bullet wounds on your person; it's best if you rest,"

Rhys suddenly remembered the horrific actions of the previous night and the pain in the pit of his stomach was replaced by a different sensation; an even deeper pain. He had led those men to their deaths. And now their blood stained the French countryside, never to be cleansed. It was all his fault. Rhys opened his mouth to say something but he couldn't. He could hardly breathe.

"Muteness is a common side effect of shellshock," explained the doctor as if Rhys wasn't even in the room. "The poor chap must have suffered damnably out there," The captain strode over, closer to where Rhys lay and leaned over him cautiously. "Is he loopy?" he demanded. "I've seen men go bally, stir-fry crazy on the front line, don't you know?"

The doctor shook his head. "I shouldn't think so, but he doesn't look like he's in any fit state to go out fighting for some time, do you? Maybe it would be best for him to be sent back to Blighty to recooperate," he answered. The captain sighed wistfully. "A damnable business, really," he muttered. "We lost a good few men out there to Fritz yesterday and now we're losing a perfectly good NCO. Bloody selfish, if you ask me,"

And with that, the small group overlooking Rhys' limp form disappeared, going about their business, leaving the Staff Sergeant alone. He didn't care; he had hardly noticed their presence. His vision was clouded with images of his men being mowed down all around him. All he could hear was the sound of bullets slicing through the air; just shots everywhere, countless shots.

Rhys screamed but no sound came out. He screamed and he screamed and then as his vision became blurry, he became to laugh silently. He laughed and laughed. Until the screaming stopped. But it still hurt. It would always hurt.

[✚ Peter T. Brannigan]

OOC: I knew you were fighting in France, so I hope I’ve done right by making it seem like we’re in France? Rather than all the way back in England.


The jeep veered up along the sidewalk, almost hitting a young French girl cradling a basket of crusants mildly covered by a kitchen towel draped over the top. Her eyes widened and her feet scuttled backwards, the small panicles of her dainty toes almost being trundled over by the thick dirty tyre sheering across her path. “Vous les hommes stupides!”[/I] she angrily gnarled at the two men sitting in the jeep, before she stuck her nose up and hurried away, not quite wanting to know the response from two intimidating men looking pretty rough as they stared at her.

Peter thumped the driver on the arm with his elbow, pulling a look that suggested ‘Don’t do that again!’, but the Driver flinched and held his hands open, he was hardly a boy. “Wha-!? I thought she’d move quicker!?” the young American said in his defence, that hardly made a case for the matter. “Look, just pick me up at eight and for crying out loud, keep on the opposite side of the road!” Peter said quickly, throwing his heavy medical bag from out of the jeep, before reaching into the back to grab at his musky helmet, resting it atop of his head loosely. “Yeah yeah! You go find yourself a pretty nurse you”[/I] the American said in a mild mannered tone, his teeth pearly white as he smiled some, but Peter shook his head and hurried up, climbing from out of the jeep to step over to his things.

The Jeep’s horn went twice and pulled away, Peter didn’t dare wave, in fear the young boy would take his hand off the wheel to wave back; He was a nightmare waiting to happen. Grabbing at his stuff, the young Medic made his way towards a large building acting as the field hospital. A couple of spitfires flew overhead towards the west, causing everyone to look up briefly and admire them, but Peter could only wonder to himself - when would he get back onto the frontlines? He was so close, yet so far. Trundling up the steps, he pushed into the hospital and slowly walked towards the front-desk, flopping his helmet off to hold against his chest, as he looked upon a young busy nurse, sorting through her paperwork. “ma’am” Peter said trying to get her attention, but the young woman merely glanced the opposite way, totally obvious to her surroundings.

Tapping his fingers idly against the helmet between his fingers, he coughed some to try and grab her attention again, but this time, she looked immediately past Peter towards an approaching Doctor who brushed up aside Peter to quickly say “Nurse! I need to go help Doctor Milo, there’s a soldier with multiple bullet wounds being taken to ward two” and with that, the young woman scooted from her seat to hurry around the desk off towards the nearby bed being pushed down the corridor, with what seemed to be a Captain bothering the medical staff as they tried to wheel the injured man away. Peter merely stood there, looking like a lost child, but soon the disgruntled Captain came pacing into his general direction. “Shouldn’t you be fixing these poor bastards? I need them out there --” his hand strafed out to point towards the door, in a gesture that meant, on the field of battle “Not in here; Comforted by the solemn lot you people call doctors, saints - heh!” , but the Captain soon moved off from having a dig at Peter, he was just obviously looking for men well enough to fill the gaps in his mistakes.

Letting out a breath, Peter quickly walked down towards the nearby ward the young man had been ushered into, approaching the doors, all the doctors and nurses came flooding back out again, all of them muttering to one another about something or another, completely ignoring Peter who stood in front of them. Pushing in through the door, Peter quietly looked into the room, catching sight of the man they’d barrelled into the room quickly, just laying there - silent; But as Peter took a long look, he almost swallowed his tongue from recognising the man. Glancing behind him, he stepped into the room and closed the door, approaching the end of the bed slowly, Peter still cradling his helmet against his torso for comfort and out of respect, it was bad luck to wear headgear in a hospital. Overlooking the pale man who seemed to be suffering with shellshock, Peter placed the helmet at his feet and reached down to unclip the medical board attached to the end of the bed. “Bevan, Rhys Bevan” he said to himself slightly, not remembering the name, but surely the face.

Flapping down the piece of paper against the carded underside of the medical board, he picked up his helmet and walked around to the bed side of Rhys to look at him with a brief smile. Peter didn’t say much, he didn’t know what to say really. Placing his helmet down onto a nearby chair, he dropped his medical bag down at the chair-legs and took another long breath, before facing the man laying there. “Can you talk, Rhys?” he asked quietly, turning to him again, his hands slowly taking hold of Rhys’s left hand, pushing his fingers into the man’s wrist to silently stand there, mentally counting the pulsating beats within the bracket of a thirty-second period; It was crucial men in shellshock weren’t left alone, they needed comforting more than anything else and by the short period of monitoring Rhys’s heartbeat, he could tell the soldier’s anxiety was high, his heart was pounding…


Translations:[/b]

Vous les hommes stupides !
- You stupid men!

[Rhys Bevan]

Rhys looked up weakly as the slight figure of the medical technician looked down on him. At last, a friendly face, it seemed. Rhys had never suffered from the horrors of shell-shock before but he knew that the army cared little for the wounded. They just wanted to know whether he could still fire a gun and they would send him back onto the front line. The Royal Medical Cors' main priority was to make sure that men were never away from the front line for more than a couple of weeks - or better yet, not at all - and the cold mechanical way in which the doctors had talked about him made his skin crawl. He was just another number to them. Everyone was just a number in this war.

He was surprised that he recognised the medic overlooking him as he had seen him around a few times before, back home in Britain. Rhys didn't know the man's name and he doubted whether he had known his before reading his form but it was at least comforting to know that he was in the hands of someone he knew was a skilled technician as opposed to the portly doctor who had treated him earlier. Even in his weakened state, Rhys could smell the stench of alcahol on his breath. Not a particularly comforting smell for a patient admittedly.

“Can you talk, Rhys?” asked the man presently, moving his hand towards Rhys' wrist, seemingly to check his pulse. Rhys had no intention of moving his head to see exactly was was going on for fear that he would be unable to see anything and there was no feeling in his arm or wrist at all. The medic could have been cutting his wrist open with a hatchet and he wouldn't have known any different. Rhys swallowed and opened his mouth to say something - anything - but no sound came out, save a pathetic croak that made Rhys' blood turn cold. What if he could never speak again?

He picked up the doctor's discarded chart and pencil from the foot of the bed. Rhys tried to read what was written on it but it was all indecernible squiggles to him and he gave up seconds later. It seemed his sense of reading had been damaged also. Nevertheless, Rhys began to write on the form slowly, trying to fight back the blurriness of the room that was threatening to push him back into unconsciousness. I can't speak, the writing said. Where am I?

[✚ Peter T. Brannigan]

A small concerned look draped over Peter’s face as the man laying there, couldn’t even slur out a word or two; Shellshock effected everyone differently, but the one main symptoms in a majority of cases was the fact that all the victims had bad nightmares, delusional bout’s of hallucinations and better still, ended up schizophrenia in a matter of years if untreated with the delicate care of medication or therapists. It was just the way of life, the brain was one big soft marshmallow and each time a poor soldier witnessed something beyond barbaric - it was like brazening the marshmallow over an open fire every time.

Letting go of the man’s wrist, he felt the discomfort and awkwardness of the patient before him, the feeling of not being in control of your own body. Watching as the man noticed the medical board with a couple of pieces of paper on it regarding Rhys, he was more astounded at the fact the man actually retrieved it to begin writing something -- it was squabble of scribble, but a clear sign of improvement and potential left in the man worth saving. Taking the chart, Peter looked to Rhys laying there and softly nodded as he spoke. “Yes, you’re in a hospital” he clearly stated, not wanting to confuse the man or otherwise. “Just rest up, you’re suffering with Shellshock, your body’s adapting to the trauma you’ve suffered” he added afterwards, trying to reassure the man he’ll be alright.

Placing the chart back down against the side of Rhys, just in case he wanted to write anymore, Peter briefly moved away to tug open his medical bag, reaching in to pull out a small syrette of morphine. “Are you in any pain at all Rhys? You’ve suffered quite a few injuries and… You’ve only been given a small dosage of painkillers” he said worryingly, not wanting to alarm him, but neither wanting him to suffer - it was jotted on the paper he came in with a high dosage of morphine in his system, by now, that would have undoubtedly have worn off. Holding the syrette, he patiently waited to see if the man was in any real pain to have more morphine in his system, it wasn’t so great to go numbing the body too greatly now.

Looking to the window, he quietly watched as yet another few spitfires flew over the building. The war wasn’t stopping for anyone and hopefully, it moved further away from where they were. He wasn’t quite sure the poor patients in the hospital could bare the sight of soldiers and the like anymore; looking back to Rhys, he smiled briefly and laughed some as he made a joke. “Well, at least you’ll be getting a bed bath from a nurse in the morning” he teased, trying to raise his morale a little - just, a little at least.

OOC: Sorry short-ish post, not much to write about.