The American Literate's Monthly

*Issue Number One, brought to you by ProFile Publishing, edited by William Peter Longman IV, is covering straight from France, where we are the first trans-Atlantic team to take a look at this terrible tragedy. This is a directly written and photographed report, which will not be edited before it comes back to our readers in the US.*

WP stopped dictating to no-one in particular for a second, and drew a sharp breath of the rusty air. He could see why the soldiers wouldn't want to be here, but also why they had to be; for loyalty, and for country. Perhaps he should use that line; he grinned, stepping out of the van and touching a dainty leather foot onto the dirt below.

The cameraman walked up to him, having taken the other car, and rubbed his hands together in glee. "It's gonna be walkin' from here on, sir." Even wrapped up in his black cloak, black gloves and black bowler hat, he shivered a little. It could have been the cold; it could have been the overwhelming fear from this long forgotten battlefield, now simply a muddy trench or two in France.

Jumping down the front part of the grave, the team of about five 'specialists' took their first look at what life was really like in World War One. WP's first thought was simply one word: brown. The surrounding of muck was dizzying, and it made him ill just to think about the countless millions that were spending the primes of their lives stuck here. He remembered his own eighteenth birthday well - lots of money, lots of partying, plenty of presents and, of course, pretty young Nadia Spelling. The sight before him simply made him think that someone's eighteenth birthday had been spent in poverty, dispair, with no family in sight, and certainly no pretty little Nadia.

They'd been walking for only a minute when they found a body. With the fright still alive in his death-ridden face, there was something about him that made WP give him a stare. "Jonno! Let's come and set this guy up over... there, on that trench." Handling a dead body didn't worry him, especially as there wasn't any blood. It did, however, please him that he wasn't the one doing the handling. That was the job of the cameraman-come-props department, John Porter, or Jonno as a dubiously affectionate nickname.

Jonno performed his task with ease, not noticing the short slip of paper that tore itself away from the dead soldier's chest and planted itself at the feet of WP. The editor frowned, looked down, and picked up the leaf, unfolding it and scanning it briefly. As soon as he got to the end, he decided to go back through and read more thoroughly, the one religious word running through his mind: sales.

***************

As soon as I arrived in France, I knew that I was going to die. Within my first month here, which is longer than most survive, I had decided what I wanted on my gravestone. It reads: 'In Mem. Azizi Robert Graves Orrington, Beloved Son of Charles and Mary. 1896 ~ 1915.' However, that is obviously not to be anymore.

The worst thing about the British Expeditionary Force is that everyone's willing to poke their little fingers at anyone else at a moment's notice. A group of us went out to see if the hun was making a night advancement when we were restocking our food supply from a back trench, and we were meant to go in shifts of half an hour each. I was second to go out, but I was called away by the CO to do him a favour. He meant to tell someone else to go ahead of me, but forgot, and then on the charge the next day he was shot. The new CO, who I expect had been rooting to get the position for a while since, decided that he'd have a crackdown, and I was found to be guilty of cowardice for not going on my duty.

I am to be shot tomorrow at midday.

Whoever discovers this must find my parents and tell them that I am innocent. I don't expect that the Army will get it back before next March, or whenever the war finishes, so I beg that they send this on to them. The end of the letter bears the address. However this court of instantaneous supremacy and downfall may rule, I have done nothing that would possibly condone what has been done to me.

My parents and friends know me to be a staunch Christian. Religion has been the only thing to keep me going throughout life. I haven't had an easy one; some people have the looks, the art, the money and the intelligence, but all I have had is the faith. My family has built itself from rubble, and I had always intended to stand at the top of that pile of stone. Now, because of my dishonouring and discharge from the King, I will lie at the bottom, with no burial and no grave. All I will be is an unnamed skeleton, in an unnamed trench, in an unnamed country.

So here I must end. This will be my last night's sleep, seeing the friends who now wish to disown me forever. Perhaps this is because they want to, but I think it is because they must. They must, for their beloved King and their beloved bloody country. Goodbye, England. May you live long in my memory.

Yours innocently and loyally,

Private Azizi Orrington.

***************

The crew had all gathered around now, staring at the blinding piece of paper. France was now dark, not claiming the beauty of blood-red that it once had; instead, it could only win a darker, blacker colour, known to most as death. The war hung over the group like a scythe, waiting to swoop and cut off the heads of the longest poppies. This one was a special scythe, however; it swung low.

WP noticed a smaller scrawl of writing along the bottom, immediately recognised it as the Latin that he once knew. He tried to call up a memory of the language from his childhood, a faded one, but still intact; perhaps, he thought, like the innnocence of Azizi Orrington. Present, alive, but fading and never believed.

"Non solum nobis divites esse volumus," he muttered, a frown crawling across his face like a dying soldier over No Man's Land. "We do not wish to be rich for ourselves alone." He shook his head in disbelief. According to the evidence in front of him - article number one, he mused cynically upon the obvious lack of justice - the man was innocent, shot in the back of the head where a gaping hole had recently stopped its bleeding. To think that this miscarriage of justice would happen to so many in this terrible feud consciously shook his nerves, tearing up any semblance of respect that he may ever have had for the British Armed Forces.

"WP! I found something," staff writer Ben MacDonald exclaimed, rushing back to them with a dusty and rather buxom black bound book, yellowed pages poking up from underneath the covers. "It's the regiment's log book. Apparently, the group around this area was the... uh... fourth Oxfordshire." He read from the red indents into the card backings, still unsure if it was the original colour or not. "The last entry indicates that the regiment was told to march to Ypres to back up the first Manchesters on the front line."

A thought came into the editor's head, one that had probably floated through the rest of the crew's minds about ten seconds beforehand. "Take a look back. See if you can see anything about a Private Orrington." Any thoughts of direct reports now drifted away from his train of thought, especially now that he had given it a new objective.

"Uh... Private A. Orrington sent on watch the night of the thirteenth of May... then there's something scribbled out... wait a second." MacDonald put an appropriate grimace onto his face to tell the rest of the crew that something was not as it should have been. Even with the logic of his, he was able to turn the page back and stare through a blank place in the log book, and squint through to read what had formerly been there. This dead battlefield in France was very much alive.

"'Meeting of Commanding and Second Officers in the officers' mess after eating hours. Discussion took place with two interruptions.' I don't like the sound of that," Ben told the rest of them, who nodded, slowly, in agreement. Anyone else would have thought that this was the scene of a danse macabre, but to the six trans-Atlantic all-too-inquisitive journalists, it was a murder site, however legal.

Needless to add, they had all cast themselves into the role of detective. Their previous paparazzi passions were now dispersed, the epiphany of their interests now coming into the light. "I think that our beloved Azizi saw something that he shouldn't have done." Another bout of nods, Ben winning by far.

They stood for minutes, finding solace in the deadly quiet. Nothing was there to surprise them from the calm. France's heart was beating slowly, the dawning eyelid closing slowly above them from the ash and dust of war. War, war, war; the one word that had meant so much death, and so much destruction; the one word upon which the soldiers had been bidden to shoot.

In the silence of four o'clock in the afternoon, local time, something disturbed and rattled the peace. A load of shouts in a foreign language disturbed them, and they soon dispersed. Maybe they would never know what had happened to this soldier, forgotten on some French battlefield. As they ran, WP looked back onto the peaceful face of his man, taking a quick monochromatic photograph of that landscape of emotion. He'd died at the hands of his own side, the same group that were complaining of lack of men.

More voices and more shouting kneaded the atmosphere of its former obscurity, and WP had to turn and run. He looked at that slip of paper on Azizi's chest, and took off the bowler hat that he was so proud to wear. Nodding solemnly, he stepped back once, before turning and running back to the car awaiting him. This was one story that was never to be published.