"Consolidation"
The battle which had felt like an hour had started to slowly die down, with the remnants of our squad clearing out the Separatist's, I climbed out of the dugout and looked back at Charles, his face a sign of curiosity.
"So then, is the guy dead?"
"Yeah, I offered surrender but he spat at me."
"And?"
"I shot him, simple."
Charles simply nodded, his hand wrapped around the tip of his rifle, the stock against the ground and the barrel pointing up towards the sky, he was crouched down and was observing the surrounding area, his anti tank launcher still around him, unused. I sat down next to him, looking around, trying to catch my breath after the attack. I brought my wrist up and rolled back my sleeve to check my watch, The time said 11:29, My eyes widened, Our assault had started at 11:07, I was amazed on how quick this assault really was from the moment we exited our IFV, but it also dawned upon me on how many lives were lost within that 22 minutes of combat. I hear the iconic voice of Prince shout out.
"LEFT FLANK CLEAR!" I looked over at his direction, shouting back.
"RIGHT FLANK CLEAR!"
I see Prince give me a thumbs up from the distance, he was standing over another dugout with Miller, the bodies of 2 Separatists laying around them. Charles and I sighed. After a couple of moments I stood up, Charles looking at me.
"Where are you goin'?"
"I'm gonna get Albert"
"Let me help."
I nodded, motioning my head for him to follow me, I waited for him to stand up. He rises to his feet and follows along with me. We both walked over to Albert's corpse which was still next to the dugout. I crouched down and slid off his rucksack, putting it aside as I started to unstrap his flak vest, sliding it off him. I tossed it aside, sighing as I saw the body armor which was covered in bullet holes and shrapnel. I closed my eyes and sighed, I opened my eyes again and undid the straps around his flak vest. As I slid it off I saw the bullet holes and his blood stained camouflage uniform. I stand up, motioning my head over to Charles for help. He nods and walks over to his legs. We both lifted him up by his arms and legs respectively, carrying him over to the trail which was directly in front of the position. We go past Magnus and Elliot, Elliot was on the radio calling for a medical evacuation, Ashton was just about fine, a dressing wrapped around his fingers. Elliot looks over at us and speaks up, covering the transmitter on the radio.
E: "Who's that?"
C: "Albert."
E: "What happened?"
O: "He was peeking into a dugout and he got shot up."
E: "Bastards."
Charles and I gently placed his body down on the path in front of the treeline, the treeline was completely destroyed, the trees were all dead and most of them had collapsed from the amount of bombing that it endured throughout the months. We placed his body down onto the ground, Charles sighed, placing his hands on his hips he looked towards me.
"Hey, Oakley. Did you know something?"
"What?"
"You know our guys have been trying to capture this position for about a year now?"
"A year? We took it but the others couldn't?"
"Yeah, this particular treeline saw a lot of fighting. We've had about 6 failed assaults here in the past 3 months, none of them took the position."
"...Fuck"
"You see that over there?" He pointed further down the treeline, I could see the remains of an old position.
"Yeah?"
"That was the original position, the pigs moved it here about a month ago."
"Why did they move it?"
"I don't know, maybe we just bombed it so hard it was unusable, but, getting to the point, We're lucky that they moved it, if they didn't move it, we probably would have died like the rest."
"..Fucking hell"
We both sighed, looking at Albert's corpse, My gaze not leaving the bullet holes that had hit him, I counted in my head the amount of bullet holes he had, …7,8,9,10,11. He had 11 bullet holes in his body. Charles and I looked over, we saw an APC driving towards us, It had our markings meaning it was ours, It stopped in front of us and i took a look at the beast, It 3 wheels on both sides, It was quite boxy and there were doors at the front on both sides, The back had 2 doors. I shifted my gaze to the rear and saw several guys jump out, some of them had the red cross armbands on them. I heard a shout from behind, I looked behind me and saw Ashton being walked to the APC, with the assistance of Elliot. The dressing he had over his fingers was now fully red. They moved to the back of the APC, where they helped him climb inside. They placed Albert's body onto a stretcher and they lifted him up and slid him into the rear of the APC. The driver of the APC opened the window and spoke up.
"Hey guys." The rest of us looked at him, curious to what he was going to say.
"Good job on capturing this spot." He gave us a thumbs up, we all simply nodded, I gave him a wave as he closed the door. The doors on the rear closed as the APC now drove off, It stayed on an already existing trail so as not to go over a landmine and kill the entire crew.
I sighed, walking over to Prince who was still at the dugout from earlier. I stepped over to him, asking.
"Had any trouble with these ones?"
"Nah, Piece of cake."
"Did any of them want to surrender?"
"Nope, I didn't give them the opportunity."
I simply nodded, I bent over and looked into the dugout. Something inside caught my eyes as I reached my arm into the dugout, I emerged and pulled out the dead guy's rifle. He seemed pretty well equipped for such a poorly funded "military". His rifle had an optic on it and a vertical grip on it. I took the attachments off the rifle and placed them onto mine.
"He won't need these anymore."
"I got some as well from another dugout, these guys must have taken them from some of our own."
"Very probably, These weren't manufactured until last year."
"They have to resort to scavenging because they are so poorly equipped."
"We're lucky they're so stupid."
Prince smirked and let out a small chuckle, I sat down and sighed, looking around. After a couple of minutes of sitting, Miller walks up to us, tapping me on the shoulder from behind. I looked over my shoulder to see him towering over us.
"You two, go and clear out those abandoned positions."
We both nodded, not objecting as we got up, sighing. I took my current magazine out of my rifle, reaching into my vest and replacing it with a fresh one. The two of us got up and headed forward, we walked towards the completely destroyed forest belt or treeline, you can call it whatever you want. We walked forward, into the ruins of what was formerly a green and beautiful row of trees, now a shadow of its former self. Instead of Green Trees, They are now dead, no leaves on them whatsoever, bodies and the smell of death fill the air. Each step we take makes a distinct crunching noise, caused by the bottom of our boots landing on top of branches, stones and probably even bone fragments of what was usually people. We continued walking, we eventually reached what was left of the former trenches, it was a mess, the makeshift roofs which were made of metal panels were sticking out of the ground along with the remains of the sandbags and wood that they used to protect themselves, some of the sandbags were ripped open and the dirt inside them had spilled out, a couple of them were completely emptied of their contents and were now simply bags that were ripped open from shrapnel and explosions.
"Shit, it stinks.." Prince said, I turned my head to face him and his face said it all, his face was the actual definition of the word disgust. He had his hand over his mouth but that obviously wasn't going to help him in keeping the smell out of his nostrils.
"This can be classified as chemical warfare." And he wasn't wrong, afterall, the stench can't be described but it stunk, alot, the smell was the combination of the rotting corpses, their bodies being outside and exposed to the elements made it horrible. Another example would be if you mixed in rotten eggs, rotten chicken, a dead rat, feces and urine and that'll probably be the result, but it won't be as close as to what we smelled, It was that bad.
We continued to sift through the abandoned positions, trying to minimize our breathing so we didn't have to inhale that stench. As we both walked through the remains of trenches, bodies, trees and branches, we both noticed a small shell crater, along with what looked to be helmets sticking out of the top of the crater, I looked at Prince and he did as well, we both gave off a nod as we readied our rifles. The two of us approached the crater cautiously, our fingers ready on the trigger. Every step we took was dreadful, we hoped that what we thought was in the crater was simply something else. We reached the crater, our boots meeting the edge of the crater, I looked down and was met with the sight of 4 dead Separatists, they seem to have been dead for a while, maybe 4 days because they've started to bloat, it's fucking disgusting, i've seen bodies before in our old position but we've always cleared them up after they died, these guys did not bother burying their dead which shows the difference between us and them. Prince gagged at the sight, we both stepped away from the crater. We heard something, it sounded like a snap. We turned our heads in the direction of the sound and raised our rifles, preparing for a gunfight. I took the lead as I walked forward, I squinted a little bit and started noticing a pair of boots sticking out of a small hole. I clenched my fist and held it out to my left and opened my hand and threw it forward, that was our signal for a frag grenade. I was out of grenades but Prince still had some. After a couple of seconds I saw the frag grenade land in the slight decline of the dugout. I moved back and took cover behind a metal panel that was sticking out of the ground, followed by some shouts of distress and then an explosion. I got up and quickly moved towards the dugout, running towards the dugout. I stopped at the entrance of the dugout, there I saw a couple of Separatists on the floor, lying around. Some of them were already dead, but the rest of them were alive and rushing for weapons. I trained my rifle on them and dumped several rounds into them, quickly moving my rifle onto another target after killing one, by the time i was done my magazine was completely dry, fortunately they were all dead. I reached over one of the dead Separatist's and opened his vest's magazine pouches, I proceeded to take out all of the magazines that were inside of the pouches, shoving them into my own pouches, after I was done I climbed out of the dugout.
"They're all dead, fuckers tried to hide."
I said to Prince as I climbed out, we both checked out the old dugouts that they tried hiding in but to no avail, we've killed the remaining defenders, god knows what would have happened if we did not find them. We walked back to the rest of the Squad, Miller saw us first.
"Anything?"
"Yeah, some of the fuckers but we killed them."
"Great, go and rest."
We sat down inside the now captured trench, I let out a huge sigh as I sat down, followed by me closing my eyes because of how tired I was. I hear Miller shout out.
"You two! Go and be on guard, Oakley and Prince will be your relief later."
I sighed, knowing that I have to go on night watch, But, i have an order and i'll have to follow that.
My eyes opened up after a couple of hours of sleep, the first thing I saw was Miller in my face, squatting down in front of me, I'd be lying if i said it didn't scare the shit out of me.
"Oi, we're going to be moving out at 0600 to link up with the Marines, we'll head over to a town called Skorok."
"Isn't that occupied territory?"
"Not anymore, the 2nd Brigade managed to secure the town, the National guard is there right now, we'll be heading there to get some replacements who are waiting for us there."
"Replacements? What are they doing over in Skorok then? Can't they just come over to us?" I said.
"Well, yeah, but they already got there after we took this position, it'd be a waste of fuel to bring soldiers backwards, right?"
"Eh, I guess.."
"Perfect, pack your gear, we'll just take the road and the Marines will come."