The Forgotten Village

Young Evelyn hadn’t set out to be a war reporter. In early 1940s, women seldom did so, but young Evelyn was different. She was a budding journalist, eager and ambitious yet confined to writing human interest stories for the morning daily. She had grown up in a household where current events and world affairs were freely discussed over dinner. Often she would hear the stories of the Great War and chafe at the limitations placed on her by the virtue of her gender. She yearned to cover the stories that mattered, stories that shaped the world.

In pursuit of this cause, she repeatedly applied for overseas assignments but was only met with rejection. “The front line is a cruel place, one not for a woman” she’d often hear the editor say but her tenacity knew no bounds. She was driven by a belief to tell the war-bound tales from where the bombs fell and lives were torn apart.

Her breakthrough, however, came unexpectedly. An older correspondent, tom Anderson, was critically injured in a bombardment at the frontline and the paper needed someone to take his place on short notice. Seeing that nobody was willing to sign-up for the associated risks, Evelyn seized the opportunity, pressing the case with such intensity that she finally broke down her editor.

“You are there to observe and report, nothing more” was the last piece of advice that the editor gave as he hesitantly handed over the assignment to Evelyn, who knew better than to take his advice. She wasn’t going just to observe. She was going to immerse herself in the reality of war, to see what others refused to see…

***

When she first arrived in London, the reality of war hit her—the smell of smoke, the rubble of bombed-out buildings, the worn faces of people who had endured too much.

Amidst this chaos she managed to befriend Mister Anderson, a seasoned war correspondent, with a deep-seated compassion under his gruff exterior. Under his mentorship, Evelyn learned the ropes of war reporting—the logistics of embedding with troops, the delicate balance of maintaining objectivity while becoming intimately connected with the people whose lives she was documenting. She was ambitiously preparing for another breakthrough, driven by an insatiable need to understand the human cost of war at the front. It took months of persistence but she was finally assigned to cover an American unit heading into the heart of occupied France. It was a rare opportunity for a woman, and she knew it.

The soldier were however wary of her at first; after all she was an outsider, a civilian and woman. But that couldn’t deter young Evelyn, who proved herself through sheer grit, enduring the same hardships they did—sleeping in foxholes, eating rations, and marching through mud-soaked fields.

And that’s how found herself in the cold, quiet village on that fateful morning, standing at the edge of something she could never have prepared for.

***

The cold morning air bit into Evelyn Harris’s skin as she stepped out of the armored car. The sky was a flat gray expanse, the sun obscured by thick clouds that seemed to mirror the somber mood of the soldiers around her. They stood at the entrance of a small French village, one of many scattered across the war-torn countryside. A heavy, unnatural silence hung over the village, more oppressive than the cold and more depressing then the gloomy weather.

Evelyn wrapped her mud stained coat more tightly around her--- a futile gesture against a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. She followed Captain Reynolds, who walked with a steady and deliberate pace, his each step echoing in stillness against her heart pounding discreetly within her chest.

“Stay close. I have a bad feeling about this one” Captain Reynolds said, his voice low and gravelly marked by a cautious edge that made her pulse quicken.

The squad moved through the narrow streets, their boots crunching on the frozen ground. The air seemed thick with the acrid smell of smoke and a lingering stench of gunpowder however it mingled with something else- a faint yet unmistakable stench.

As they rounded a corner, the source of smell became horrifyingly clear. Evelyn’s stomach churned, her breath catching her throat as a heart-wrenching scene unfurled before her. The village square, once the heart of the community, was now a scene from a nightmare. Bodies lay scattered across the cobblestones—men, women, children. Their lifeless forms were contorted in unnatural positions, some still clutching each other, as if seeking comfort in their final moments.

“Oh my god” the words escaped her in a choked gasp.

Captain Reynolds stopped beside her, his face a mask of grim determination with his fists clenching at his sides. He ordered the soldiers to check for survivors, but there was an understanding that none would be found.

Evelyn meanwhile fumbled with her notebook and made a futile attempt to anchor herself in the routine of reporting, but the horror before her made it impossible to focus. Her pen hovered above the page, but no words came.

One of the soldiers, Private Sam Harris, reported back with a grim expression. “Ma’am I found this in the rubble” his voice thick with emotion. He was holding something- a doll, dirtied and torn, with its glass eyes staring blankly ahead.

Evelyn’s hands trembled as she took the doll from him. Her eyes oscillated between the doll and the small body lying nearby- a little girl not more than five. She felt tears welling up in her eyes but she blinked them back. She had to hold it together and document this horror for the world to know.

“W-why? Why would they do this?” Evelyn felt a sob rise in her throat, but she swallowed it down.

Reynolds looked at her, his eyes reflecting a weariness that went beyond physical exhaustion. “Retaliation, maybe,” he said, his voice flat. “Or maybe just because they could. Sometimes there’s no reason that makes sense.”

Evelyn nodded numbly, unable to tear her eyes away from the little girl that lay peacefully before her. She knelt beside the child, her hand hovering over the girl’s forehead but couldn’t bring herself to touch her for she seemed eerily at peace, as if she were merely sleeping, unaware of violence that took her. 

Hesitantly, she pulled out her camera, her hands still shaking as she took a few photos, each click of the shutter a painful reminder of the reality she was capturing. She had seen death before, of course, on the battlefields, in the field hospitals—but nothing like this. Nothing so cold, so deliberate...

They spent hours in the village, gathering what little information they could. There were no survivors, no one left to tell the story of what had happened. The soldiers moved silently, their faces set in grim lines. There was nothing to be said, no words that could ease the weight of the tragedy before them.

As the afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, casting grim shadows across the village, a deep and bone-weary exhaustion settled over her. Her mind was numb and her body was heavy with grief and horror.

Back at the camp, Evelyn sat alone in her tent, her typewriter in-front of her. The blank page stared back at her, a daunting expanse of white. She just couldn’t muster up the courage to convey the enormity of what she had witnessed, to make the world see the faces of the innocent lives lost.

Meanwhile Capt. Reynolds entered her makeshift workspace. He had sensed her desolation; after all she wasn’t accustomed to seeing the brutalities of mankind like they all were as soldiers.

“How do I write this?” She asked sensing his presence, her voice breaking “How do I make anyone understand?”

Reynolds placed a hand on her shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that felt more like a lifeline. “You write it because you have to,” he said softly. “Because if you don’t, no one will ever know. Those people deserve to be remembered.”

Evelyn nodded, tears spilling over despite her efforts to hold them back. “I’ll write it,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I’ll make sure they’re not forgotten.”

Her resolve struck an odd cord inside her as she began to type; her words flowing raw and unfiltered. The emotions and images of the day poured out of her as she wrote of the village, the smoke and death, the lifeless bodies of children who would never grow up. Above all she wrote of the life of the soldiers along her, their quiet, stoic grief and Captain Reynolds, who kept going for the sake of the lives that depended upon him. She watched him, lost in thought, his eyes distant, scanning the desolate plains. Within her conscience, she felt a deep reverence for him—a man whose burdens were incomprehensible, his grief unparalleled, yet who pressed on for the sake of those who still depended on him.

The next morning, Evelyn’s article was dispatched back to New York. It was published within days, the front page haunted by image of the doll she had found in the rubble. Beside it, the headline posed an unsettling question: “For whom do these men fight if there are none left?”- beneath which lay a photograph of Captain Reynolds’s platoon.

-The End