• My short story for English Class.
    2 replies, posted
This is the story I had to do, It's supposed to be on the topic we are doing for our sophomore research projects and I wasn't going to do anything special with it but I became pleasantly ok with it. Topic is war crimes btw. [QUOTE] He woke up to the smell of caving soil and burning propane filling the back of his nose. It seemed like he fell asleep a week ago, but the transition from then to now was instant. The memory of a scattered stone thumping against his exposed head was the first thing he thought about. “What’s today?” he asked the apparent medic on duty. “Wednesday, you’ve only been out for an hour.” “What’s happening up above, have we gotten anything done?” “Those bastards just have a better position than us, and all I’ve heard is that since they have our POWs and have already broken the conventions we’ve been given a go to do whatever we have to do to rescue the prisoners.” He grabbed most of his gear and a stale lukewarm teacup of coffee left sitting on the cot next to him. The residue from the tear gas was still about and breathing felt like breathing in hot steam. Walking down the crumbling hallways his mind wandered to whatever happened to be on his mind, how much he’d wish for a dry pair of socks or thinking about his own self-pity. He hardly noticed stepping over the limp bodies beneath his feet that he had gotten so used to. He hadn’t given up hope of going back to his couch back in his own country, but he did give up all passion he had for the war. He could see the gray light leaking in from a corner in the trench a few hundred feet away, and when he approached it the sound of gunfire and screams were no longer muffled. He approached one of the other recruits who had been fiddling with his shoes. “Why is everyone retreating back into the trenches? Where are the captains?” “Dead. All I know is that all the privates decided themselves that the POWs are more valuable than getting our own asses out of here, we’re going to try and pull a perfidy I think. I’m dead afraid but at least I’ll get to see the looks on those bastard’s faces when they find out what just happened after it’s done and over.” “Perfidy? Isn’t that a war crime?” “It isn’t like it matters anymore, we’ve been given the go since they’ve already been labeled as traitors, and hell if we win how will anyone know about what went on here?” The boom of another recruits voice signified for everyone to get into position as he raised a white flag. He watched as half the man exited the trenches with as much ammunition as they could conceal and the other half of the men huddled against the trench’s forward walls. Over a megaphone a terribly accented man spoke in English with a weary voice. “Throw your weapons as far to our side as you can, and we will send our men to collect you.” He looked through a periscope at the opposing men clumsily walking towards his own allies standing outside of the trench. The men handling the mounted turrets dropped their guard on both sides. Before he even knew they were actually going through with the perfidy the men drew their guns and the men from the trenches rushed out and poured onto the field and the sudden rush of the sound of gunfire almost threw him to the ground. He didn’t want to fight but he looked around and realized he was the last one in the trenches save for the men who couldn’t even hope to stand up. He grabbed a rifle and peeked out, followed by the quickest fear-fueled sprint he thought he’d ever done. He lined up with the rest of the soldiers at the no man’s land and hid behind sandbags and barbed wire. “Is everyone ready? It’s not likely we will see those trenches again.” He had wondered why the only lieutenant had spoken so personally till he looked around and saw maybe six others besides himself. Had they really took that many casualties? He looked behind him and save for dirt and juicy grass the ground looked like a wriggling mass. It was good there were no more opposing forces on the outside, but none of them knew what wait inside the fortress-like building. “All right then let’s go.” They sure didn’t run but they hadn’t been walking either, they were eager to get out of the line of sight of any strays that may have been left alive. The entrance to the building they had entered was just a small emergency exit door made of thick metal. Inside was the smell of latex and compost. It was surprisingly quiet, they figured all the POWs had been executed when it had been realized there was a perfidy in effect. They didn’t dare split up to search the building. The first room they entered was inhabited by two apparent doctors and a mutilated blob on an operating table. A moving mutilated blob. The scientists begged for mercy and simply plead that they had only been following orders but that didn’t save them. And as for the man on the table he couldn’t have been saved and a quick death was the best gift the soldiers could have given them. As they moved on to more rooms it became apparent this wasn’t just a confinement center or a labor camp, but it was a biological experimentation facility. The less ravaged bodies of men were still able to scream and moan and the halls echoed with unintelligible slurs once they had heard familiar their own familiar language. Hardly half the men could be saved, and he thought that the best medical help wouldn’t save half of the men they rescued, and they sure as hell didn’t have the best medical help. The first thing to do he thought would be to contact some form of governing power and get the word out about what happened here. Although he knew it was obtained in a satanical way he convinced the others they should grab as much research papers and identification information on the subjects as they could take in their already overloaded backpacks, because he figured there wouldn’t be a salvage team at this point in the war. Although he had been desensitized by the now casual horrors of war, this building repulsed him and he knew none of the research was justified, and he was glad when the soldiers and ably walking prisoners emerged from the building and heard the sound of helicopters in the distance. The sound of helicopters no one requested.[/QUOTE]
You used a lot of awkward adjectives (caving soil, scattered stone, apparent medic, stale lukewarm coffee, apparent doctors). There's also a lot of run-on sentences and you need to learn how to use commas. Another point that would make your writing much stronger would be eliminating passive verbs (am/are/is and was/were), but that's another step up. [editline]07:17PM[/editline] protip never using passive verbs in general makes you sound like a boss
I understand the awkward adjectives it was part of the assignment and I agree it sounded funny. Run on sentences I could work on I know, and not using passive verbs is very tough.
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