Through the crowded underbelly of the ship came a striking man in a pristine uniform. We could tell who it was miles away, Marco. The Sergeant always looked pristine, he always gave good care for his appearance. Thought that while we may be in a war, that was no excuse for looking poorly.
A very out there attitude that not many men could share. Even in the trenches he always had a clean shave, as well as the cleanest clothes that he could find, which was not very clean but it was enough to stand out. In the mess of a troop transport we were in, the gentleman moving his way through the varmin and undesirables of the Legionnaires stuck out like a sore thumb, he was not dressed in his field uniform,like the rest of us, but his service uniform that made him look like a high class noble walking through a ghetto.
"Gentleman" Sergeant Marco said looking at the six of us lazing around. "Glad to see you making good use of your down time" The Sergeant said, looking at Carlo pull off the coin he just won off the bed and into his pockets. "The best we can" Felix responds looking up at the man. "Good thing you're here, me and the boys were just talking about if anyone knew about where we were heading, they obviously don't know, have you heard anything new."
I said as I looked at Marco, who then crossed his arms and leaned on the pillar that was at the foot of my bead. "In matter of fact, I have, do we have any guesses". We looked at each other, then back at Marco.
"I say Gelton" The head above me spoke. "It is the bigger front so probably need more men there" "I say the Overland" Carlo spoke up after counting the amount of his winnings. "I've heard the fighting is pretty brutal, didn't 1st Auxiliary get mauled"
The rest of us nodded, those were the two options that we have just talked about. Marco nodded his head. "Right you are Carlo, just got word that we are heading to the port city of Acies, The 9th is going to retake the lines that the 1st Auxiliary had to abandon when they were attacked by the O.R."
Once we knew our destination, nothing else changed, we would still have to cross the Mare Sea and get to South Insula. We were all excited for it, this was the first time any of us would leave North Insula, this was our chance to explore the world, we thought so, see different cultures and the such. We thought it a part of the grand adventure that we signed up for. We should have taken heed, the signs were there.
We were going to replace the Auxiliary Army that was just utterly destroyed. We paid no attention to this, didn't even think about what we would be up against, what destroyed an entire division. We continued to gamble, smoke, anything we could do to make that ship ride faster, to get to the action quicker. We got our wish. Only about a week later we arrived at the city of Acies.
The city of Acies was one of the largest cities in the Passage, many times larger than Rus and was filled with people. Many people displaced by the war fled to the larger cities, Acies being the largest city in East Passage, many refugees would end up there. We could not enjoy the city, for as soon as we got there, it seemed immediate that we left.
We enjoyed some fanfare though, while marching through the city to the eastern side. Some of the streets would line up with many people and watch real Legionnaires go to battle. I can remember the sight well.
There were hundreds of people waving the Stared flag of the Empire. Little kids sitting on their parents shoulders trying to look over at the person in front of them. At some points, girls would run up to a marching soldier and kiss him on the cheek.
I wasn't so lucky, but Adrian was, he would brag all the way to the front about it. We felt like heroes coming home after winning a stunning victory. In reality we have yet to do anything. But at that moment I felt invincible. We marched throughout the large city and out to one of the roads leading east.
There were some kids who joined us for the first mile or so of the march, talking with the soldiers and laughing with them until they felt like they had to leave. The general spirit of the squad was good. The experience of Acies only lifted our spirit and confidence even more. The usual stone face of Marco was in a permanent grin after he as well got a kiss. Those high spirits would not last long.
The march to the front took us a couple of days. We exited the historical borders of the Passage and entered the lands of the O.R. The once high spirits had returned to normal. We had started to get serious. The closer to the front the more corrupted the land seemed to be. We were less than a mile from the front and we could hear batteries going off every couple of minutes in the distance.
As soon as we got to base camp, we were told to set up. Our squad built a tent in one of the corners of the camp, then rested. Me being the adventurous type, walked around the camp to get situated. The camp was enormous, it was the entire 9th Legionnaires, some 15,000 men laid out a couple of miles on the front.
The camp was never full though as people would always rotate in and out of the lines. We were lucky, it had been some months since the war broke out, around five at this point. When the war first started, we were still in primary school, and the war was fought very differently. In the first month, many large battles would occur with horrendous casualty rate, we would almost never hear of the casualties, just if the boys whipped the fight, but I would find out after the war just how horrendous they were.
In the early days it was just a mass of infantry formations lining up against each other, but instead of muskets and cannons, it was machine guns and howitzers. The Generals quickly realized that it wasn't working, and the O.R. ordered their men to dig in, and our Generals promptly attacked, promptly lost, then promptly decided to dig in opposite of them.
Fast forward a few months and there I was. In the new generation of warfare, trench warfare. It seemed the Engineers had been busy as all day and night they would go to the front and expand and add to the trench lines. On the Overland front alone, there were hundreds of miles of Trenches, and we had our own piece of that long stretch of trenches, and we were confident that we could defend it.