Listening to the "puffing" sound of bullets burrowing into the soil, Lynn felt a strong sensation— they were just a few centimeters away from him. Just a slight raise of his head, and the bullets would penetrate the helmet, resulting in a horrific scene of brain matter splattering. He had experienced this "intuition" before while holding the frontline position, but after the trials of blood and fire, life and death, Lynn could now persuade himself with rational thinking. It is said that new recruits fear artillery, while veterans fear machine guns. With insufficient experience to accurately discern the proximity of bullet trajectories, Lynn did not blindly look up but instead reached into his pocket for a mirror, or more precisely, a piece of broken mirror not even half the size of his palm. Pinching its sharpest edge between his index finger and thumb, he slowly raised the mirror, its surface reflecting the deep green of the m42 "big-eared" steel helmet. The distance from the top of the helmet to the edge of the foxhole was less than 5 centimeters. Moving the mirror to observe the surroundings on both sides, Lynn quickly withdrew it and returned it to his pocket— this inconspicuous item might just save his life on the battlefield. At the same time, he tilted his head slightly and shouted towards "Butcher": ""Hauptfeldwebel, Feuer frei?"?" (Sergeant, open fire?)
Regardless of whether the grammar was correct, this was the most complex sentence Lynn could utter in German under the current circumstances.
Soon after, from the nearby foxhole, the Butcher's resonant voice came, rhythmically: ""Alle... Achtung... Feuer!"!" (All... attention... fire!)
As the last word fell, without hesitation, Lynn performed a mudfish-like maneuver, swiftly raising the rifle to aim. With a strong sense of confidence, he didn't overthink it and squeezed the trigger when the figure on the opposite side froze in the sight.
The gunshot rang out, but the figure remained standing. Lynn was startled, then immediately regretful: not only had he failed to calculate the target's speed and direction, but the rifle's sight was also set at 300 meters. It seemed there was no room for pride and carelessness on the battlefield!
Amidst the surrounding gunfire, the support of the mg34/42 that had arrived earlier sounded particularly jubilant. In the pleasing sound of "tearing linen," the fastest-running Soviet infantrymen fell in rows, but those behind neither turned back to flee nor stopped shooting; they maintained their "leapfrog" posture. Immediately afterward, the sound of a heavy machine gun from the rear explained their tactical approach: several bursts of bullets swept down, suppressing the gunfire on the German side.
After firing the first shot, Lynn lowered his head and body, swiftly pushed back the bolt of the rifle, and adjusted the sight back by 100 meters. Taking a deep breath, he leaped up, aimed, and fired again. The figure in the sights staggered and fell exaggeratedly. Lynn felt a faint sense of relief.
Lowering his head and bending his body, he quickly operated the bolt of the rifle, loaded a row of bullets, and estimated that the Soviet soldiers were now closer. He grabbed a grenade, held it with his right hand at the bottom of the wooden handle, and pulled down the pull ring with his trembling left hand, but he didn't hear the expected hissing sound. Seeing smoke already emanating from the bottom of the wooden handle, he exerted force with his right hand, raising it high, and then threw it out. Watching the grenade roll in the air vertically, he suddenly worried whether he had thrown it too high— if it exploded in the high sky, the effect might not be as good.
As it turned out, Lynn's worry was entirely unnecessary. Under the influence of gravity, the grenade traced out a high-angle trajectory, and it took about a second to explode after landing. This short amount of time was not enough for the nearby Soviet infantrymen to react. Three of them were directly blown away, and several more were affected, likely suffering severe injuries if not death.
After observing the entire process from the grenade's descent to explosion, Lynn lowered his head, picked up the rifle, and deliberated for two or three seconds before rising again to shoot. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, a Soviet mortar shell whistled and landed several meters away. Although the explosion's force was secondary, the helmet received a heavy blow, leaving Lynn feeling dizzy. For a moment, he thought he was done for by shrapnel. Falling back into the foxhole, there were two seconds of blankness in his mind. When a sharp pain came from the top of his forehead, he dared to have a sense of luck— this pain was from blunt force rather than the sharp pain of a cut. After enduring for another two seconds, he reached into his pocket, took off his helmet. Normally, a Waffen-SS helmet would have a shield-shaped double lightning bolt emblem on the right side and a "W" emblem with a red circle on the left, but this sand-painted helmet had no markings at all. At this moment, a nearly rhombus-shaped dent appeared on the front of the helmet. Turning it over to look at the lining, if the kinetic energy of the shrapnel had been a little greater, his life might have ended here!
Having narrowly escaped death once again, Lynn's heart was filled with mixed emotions, but the gunfire from near and far reminded him: he was still on the battlefield. As long as the Grim Reaper was willing, he could take this humble life at any time.
A rotten protection was better than no protection at all. Lynn put his helmet back on, knelt on one knee, picked up the rifle that had fallen in front, lowered his head, bent his body, operated the bolt, ejected the spent cartridge, reset it, took two deep breaths in succession, and once again raised the rifle. This persistence and fearlessness formed a stark contrast with his past weakness and mediocrity.