Simmons of Section Six

A very short story based on the life of Danny Simmons (fictional character based off true events) in the Great War 1914 - 1918.

ONE: Late December, 1915

It was Monday, the twentieth day of December, and Private Danny Simmons of Section Six made preparations to set sail for Alexandria, Egypt. His horse was His Majesty’s Transport (HMT) Nestor, a large military steam ship of the age. The First World War was just beginning, at least it was for the young Private Simmons. He’d enlisted over a year ago, and had been moved to Redmires Camp in December 1914. There, he and the other thousand men trained for five months, and were then transported to other training facilities like that of Penkridge Bank Camp, near Rugeley, Ripon �" where small arms fire training began in full �" and Hurdcott Camp, near Salisbury. His fate had led him long, but it was high time to make war. He mounted the Nestor, and they steamed away, away from Devonport, England, and across the waters of the North-East Atlantic, past Gibralter, through the Mediterranean and into Alexandria Port, Egypt.

TWO: Early January, 1916

The first noticeable difference was the weather. It was much hotter and more arid there, and all the Tommies were used to the damp cool of the British Isles. The Sheffield City Battalion (12^th Battalion of the 31^st Division) were tasked with protecting the Suez Canal from the threat of the Turkish Army, although this threat was soon dissolved. When it was, the British Army officers reassigned the 31^st Division to take part in the great plan of the summer Somme offensive in France, and so the Sheffield City Battalion remained in Egypt whilst the plans were finalised and to watch the canal.

THREE: Early March, 1916

It was the tenth day of the month, and it was time to depart. A moderately hot Friday, and the soldiers embarked upon the transport ship HMT Briton, at Port Said, Egypt. They took the five-day voyage overseas to the port of Marseilles, France.

FOUR: Late March, 1916

The Sheffield City Battalion and the rest of 31^st Division had landed in France, and moved quickly. Just eighteen days after the landing, they had took over a stretch of the front line, opposite the fortified hilltop village of Serre. The men prepared for the battle ahead, and made their plans for the next few months.

FIVE: Late June, 1916

The last days of June couldn’t have gone quicker, and the soldiers made peace with God. The terrible weather in the last few days had postponed the attack, and so the great offensive was to take place on the morning of the first day of July. A huge five-day artillery bombardment was carried out by the Allies just before the attack, and planes prepared for the attack. Nearly two million British shells befell the German lines, and the more experienced French guns provided overwhelming artillery fire. The divisions readied, and more soldiers arrived. They needed all the men they could get, and by the last day of June, thirteen British and six French divisions were present, totalling tens or hundreds of thousands of men, most of them in their late teens or early twenties. Well, this was how the British saw it. On the German side, it was much different. The huge artillery bombardment made it clear that an attack was imminent, and the Germans just hid underground and waited for the shelling to stop.

SIX: Early July, 1916

With the Allied shelling done, the whistles blew, and eleven British divisions started walking towards the German lines. Unaware of the enemy’s preparations, the British men paced with thunderous confidence, but it didn’t last long. The German defences opened, and the rattling hail of machine gun fire littered the scarred earth with British dead. In the first two hours of the fight, nearly twenty thousand Brits lost their lives, including Private Simmons of Section Six, stern veteran soldier in the Somme. It took another one hundred and forty days, in which over a million men were killed, before the battle came to an indecisive end.

Now

Private Danny Simmons, died 1^st July, 1916, aged 18, lies somewhere near Serre, France, a few feet beneath your boots, still where he fell from a hundred bullets, and was never recovered. His mother last saw him in late 1914, and his sweetheart lived a long life of loneliness, until her death in mid-2001, aged 99 in Sheffield, England.

Author's Note

Quickly put together in about a hour or two, just a short 700 word story about a young British soldier.

One of my first short stories!

Thanks :P (HONEST REVIEWS PLEASE!)