The second ticked by and more and more cracks filled the air. My mind was blank, empty of the prior thoughts of death and worry. I almost had nothing in my mind, except my mission. I had to cross some hundred meters of land.
The first two waves should have taken the first line, if not, that would be our job, but our main goal was to secure the second line, we would need to get to the first line first anyways. One hundred meters, that is what stood in my way. My mind was clear when we heard the whistle.
With a sort of casualness we climbed over the top. Once we got over I looked out onto dead man's land. The white flurry made visibility low, but not low enough. In the distance I could see men from the first two waves hiding behind fallen trees, in shell craters, anything.
We took it one step at a time. We could not run the entire length of the land so we jogged originally, kept our heads down, and a good formation while having eyes and rifles pointed towards the enemy trench. Bullets would crack next to us above us, but we continued. I could see artillery shells landing in the O.R trench and was surprised that they were still shelling them. Some shells fell short and hit our own guys hiding from the O.R fire.
A bullet cracked right next to me, and I recoiled slightly but was uninjured. "Fuck" I heard a little yelp come from my right, Nando. I instinctively left the forward marching line and turned to my friend. He fell in the mud and was clutching his ankle. I rushed down to him. "Nando, you good". "I'm fine, The bloody bastards got me, barely". "Can you believe that?" Nando said, leaning slightly back and spitting into the mud next to him.
"Twenty yards in my first action and I get clipped in the ankle, what are the odds?" I grinned at him "We'll come up with a better story later, but for now you got to get back to the line" He was holding his leg just above his boot, and had pressure there. "Can you walk" "No chance in hell". "Can you make it back to our lines" "Don't really have a choice do I' '.
I helped him put on a hastily equipped bandage, not my best work, but we were in a bind. "Alright, make it back, it's only twenty some yards, I got to go, the guys are up there somewhere, lll get the bastard back" I smiled at my friend, he smiled a strained smile back. "I'll wait for you guys" "We'll be back soon". With that I left my friend and continued towards enemy fire.
I lost sight of the rest of my boys and joined in the other hundreds of boys running towards the machine gun fire. A man right in front of me dropped like a sack of potatoes, crumbling over himself. I stepped over his limp body and kept going.
My bayonet fixed on my rifle, but I could see no enemy, just cracks in the distance and bullets flying around me. I do not know how I survived, just blind luck. A man was shot some three feet away, right in his thigh, but not me, I crossed over eighty meters of dead man's land without a scratch, that would change. We got about twenty meters away from the line, shells started dropping.
They were enemy mortars, with some friendly fire from our own artillery mixed in there for good measure. Me and the men I was around dove head first into a crater that was near, getting covered in the mud but safe from the shells and gunfire. We took a little breather, sitting around and taking shots at the enemy trench.
There was an O.R soldier, standing on top of his parapet, tossing bombs over to the attacking men. I lined up the brave idiot in my sights, and pulled the trigger. The man dropped back from the hit and fell into the trenches, out of my sight.
After the shelling let up, a group of twenty men in the crater next to us charged the line, they got to the barbed wire when the machine gun opened up. They were just mowed down. Not a single one survived, their lifeless corpses laying hunched over the barbed wire. I got up from my position to jump to the next crater which was in front of me.
As soon as I went over the edge of the crater I heard a loud crash, as if someone banged a piece of sheet metal right next to my ear. The force from the sound tossed me back into the crater, like a ragdoll. I hit the ground with some force and the air was knocked out of my lungs.
I slowly opened my eyes. The snow fell down from the clouds and slowly made its way down to my face. The white particles surrounding me. The white was displaced with brown dirt that fell on my face, another shell landed. I got my senses back and slowly got back up.
What the fuck was that. I got back to my feet shackley. I felt fine, I didn't feel injured. I started feeling around my arm and legs and my torso. Nothing. I leaned over to grab my helmet which was similarly tossed in the explosion and blood started dripping from my head.
I put my hands up to my head and they came back down red with blood. I felt nothing. I almost went into a panic as I didnt know why I was bleeding. I could feel the heart beating on my forehead, thump, thump.
Seemed as if my heart would explode out of my head. I felt a long gash on my forehead, above my right eye. The blood started to drip into my eye, obscuring the vision. I scrambled to get out my bandage from my field kit and wrapped it around my head, hoping that it would stop the bleeding.
In all sense I should have stopped there, I had received a wound and didn't know how bad it was. I could have lost consciousness from the blood loss for all I knew. But probably due to the adrenaline in my system I felt no pain and as soon as the blood stopped dripping into my vision I continued forward.
I went over the edge of the crater, this time no explosion to throw me back. There was empty ground between me and the enemy trench, with a layer of barbed wire in my way. I ran up and dove under. Another man diving next me as we crawled under the barbed wire. There were cracks over my head as I pushed forward, slowly making my way closer and closer to the enemy trench.
I don't know how many allies were behind me, or how many enemies were in front of me, I didn't care. I have been through too much to stop now. A loud thump landed next to me, sending dirt and pieces of shrapnel over me. The guy next to me was hit in the leg and cried out. I kept moving forward. Foot by foot, inch by inch. I finally got out from under the barbed wire. I took a breath. I was only a couple of meters away from the trench at this point. I got up and started yelling as loud as I could, as we were told to do in basic and jumped into the trench.
I landed in the trench with a crash, slamming my body on the wall. I looked up. They were two men in the blue O.R uniforms. Only some five meters from me. I could see their faces. The one in front had a thick mustache, both had dirt caked into their skin. They wore a shocked expression that was cut short by my gunshot.
Without aiming, and my gun leaning on my hip as I leaned against the wall, I shot instinctively into them. I stopped paying attention to their faces. The man with a mustache crumpled down in an instant folding over himself till he hit the ground. I did not wait for a reaction, I ran forward with all my might and thrusted my bayonet as hard as I could into the man behind him. The man was frozen from fear. He barely moved at all as I charged him, just backing up against the wall of the trench. My bayonet entered his chest with a gnashing sound and the man gasped for air. I fell on top of him, pushing the man towards the ground with my bayonet.
I hit the ground with another thud, and some friendlies from behind me pushed around me deeper into the trench. The man was not killed instantly with my bayonet, instead he was desperately trying to gasp for breath. He looked past me and towards the sky, where the snow was falling. Tears started to form around his eyes as he started gurgling some nonsense. He tried raising his hands to something though that action was short lived. The man started choking when I got up, spitting up blood that started to form around the edges of his mouth and started to drip down from the corners. I left the man, lying there in his blood, wanting to push forward with the rest, and to get the grizzly scene out of my sight.