Where the birds cry.

I circle above the grey terrain, in the grey sky, a splash of speckled brown among the grey faces. Here, I can see the different spectrums of red. The bright vermillion of fresh blood pooling beneath a recruit, the dark maroon of crusty, dried blood on battered uniforms and the livid pink of freshly opened wounds.

A piece of shrapnel had struck my nest and as a father, I watched my unborn children fall into Death’s open arms. My wife died that night of hunger. I was able to live off crackers from the soldiers.

Ah, yes. The soldiers.

They were young and frightened men, their eyes having seen the worse in mankind. What must it be like there below?

Before the war started (I was quite a knowledgeable bird, you see), we lived in the small town of Quedlinburg and we watched as an impertinent boy with a home-done haircut scramble to join the army. Why, he was only 17!

That seventeen year old boy now lies on the bottom of the ditch, the hard lines of his face as old as twenty and his wounds merely messy recollections of his life. Is that within his broken face a sting of remorse? He reminisces that lazy afternoon abuzz with all the restless boys of the town lining up impatiently. He recalls his father giving him a broad smile and an approving thump on the back. He remembers late at night his mother crying in the kitchen.

Why are you crying mother? Aren’t you proud of your son?

I cry out above the roar of the artillery, the sound resonating through the lonely, endless skies, the boundless plains echoing my call. I can hear the deliberate, tumultuous breathing of a dying, old man as he inhales the offensive stench of the earthen trenches and I can see the thin rivulet of warm blood running down the side of his smile.

There are photos of smiling women flecked with dried mud in the trenches. One young soldier, whose callous, brown hand still clings onto a dirty black and white photo, lies on the bottom. He looks up at the bleak sky.

I’m sorry I can’t keep that promise. Take care of yourself. Love, Daddy.

And he closed his eyes peacefully, the roar of the battle dimming into eternal silence.

For fun :D This isn't an actual story, by the way.

Quite frankly, the war really isn’t getting me any benefits. My nest has gone who-knows-where and my wife’s dead. My kids? I’m not even sure. By the way, the tree has gone an unearthly red. Must be the sun. I think, by the branches, is my wife’s legs. Yeah, probably is.

So I grab one of the legs and kind of pole vault over to the next tree which isn’t red, because really, red is so last year. It’s really noisy. Gosh, the neighbours have really got to pipe down. Every second or so, someone screams and that really just isn’t cool.

Sometimes the arm of a human flies across and I really have to duck to avoid being bowled over.

I think I found Tommy's head but then again it could be something else.

Sometimes I get a bit of shrapnel in my hair and I think that's very groovy.

By the way, Bob from further down the tree, is now a postman for the soldiers. I heard that if he didn't comply, they'd smother him in eleven secret herbs and spices and send him to the Colonel.

Wonder what that is.