'1916' and '1914' by Lucienne Cummings

 1916

‘Might he not really be ill?’ asks the Sergeant. ‘These trenches are rife with disease.’

‘Nonsense,’ says the Major. ‘Now get up!’ He barks at the Corporal. Corporal Legacy gazes up at them both from his bed, like a summer cyclist caught in snow. ‘Don’t leave me Sweets!’ he cries, reaching out for hands that are a world away, if not in another dimension. ‘I’m coming home!’ 

No one visits Corporal Legacy’s grave now – with its white stone still standing to attention – not five miles from the spot where he fell.

*

1914

The might of Miss Moore’s pen is never disputed. Whereas the headmistress’s staff liken the school to a coalface, she thinks of it more as a series of trenches – in the style of a ha-ha – which prevent students straying from the path of learning. Now she sits at her desk, poised to add a black mark to yet another pupil’s record. Legacy was a middling sort of student, but with the broken inkwell incident he will become a failing one. Miss Moore’s gaze falls upon the newspaper headline War in Europe Threatens as she dips her pen in the ink. When they leave in summer, pupils like Legacy will have other uses for the sort of discipline she has provided, the sweets of which will be survival. 

For an instant the dimensions of the coming conflict alarm the headmistress, but at the stroke of her pen, all is calm.