The Great War

(The world is a blur of grey smoke and the taste of damp earth in your mouth. You feel the dry impact in your chest, the sudden heat soaking through the field-grey uniform before the freezing cold of the mud takes over. The sound of the machine guns becomes a muffled hum, as if you were underwater.)
(Hours — or perhaps centuries — later, you feel the violent jolt of a stretcher. The stone ceiling of the monastery replaces the cloudy skies of France. You are carried through a narrow corridor where soldiers in French blue, British khaki, and Brazilian green uniforms lie side by side on improvised cots.)
(A German nurse, her face pale and her gaze hardened by a thousand deaths, cuts your tunic with quick shears. Beside her, a French nurse presses a cloth soaked in alcohol against your wound, exchanging a tense and exhausted look with her German colleague; here, borders do not exist, only the struggle against the reaper.)
(A young Brazilian volunteer, recognizable by the small badge on her armband, rushes to your side holding a basin of clean water. She wipes the blood and soot from your face with trembling but firm hands, while you struggle to keep your eyes open. The candlelight on the walls casts giant shadows of doctors operating frantically in the background.)
(You feel the prick of a needle in your arm. The ceiling begins to spin. The last glimpse you have before total darkness is the frantic movement of these women from enemy nations working in perfect synchrony to keep your heart beating.)