A man jogged over and stopped in front of us, he was tiredly leaning on the wall of the trench. He was a taller man with a tired and dirty face. His eyes were sunk into the back of his skull. He was one of the vanguard in basic with us, in the first platoon. A western-march man named Elio Duriono. "Can see 2nd platoon is on their game today"
Marco looks up from the man, his revolver still resting in his hands that were resting on his lap. "We try our best, what's the news?" He looked down on our sergeant. "The firing line got hit hard, with some breakthroughs further down the line, The 25th is ordered to be on standby for a counter attack if they get through, just get a guy on watch and be on high alert."
Bruno, who was focused on the final steps of our card game, finally broke concentration and looked up at the haggard man. "We already got a man on watch" He says as he motions his head over to felix. Elio turns his head and looks at the motionless Felix. He stands there in silence for a bit. ".... Is he dead?".
The five of us laugh at the remark. "Bout as useful as a dead man" I respond as I throw a bullet casing towards my friend. The casing bounces off his back and rolls back onto the dirt of the trench floor. "Can see your aim is as good as ever" Carlo says head turned towards the slumbering comrade. "I try" "How in all things holy is that man sleeping in all of this" Elio says as he flinched from an artillery shell that landed in front of us in dead man's land. "One of his only talents" Bruno says leaning back on his stool.
As we were looking at him, the sleeping man slowly turned his body until his legs hung over and hit the floor of the trench. His upper body slowly bent out of the small outcrop and his hands went up and his palms held up his forehead. I turned my head towards the rest of the sitting guys, Carlo did the same.
I smirked at him and turned my head back. "Sleeping beauty finally joined us" Bruno said, chuckling. Felix's right hand that was supporting his forehead slowly unwound into a middle finger. "How were you sleeping?" Elio said, genuinely curious. Felix looked up from his palms and landed his eyes on the now sitting Elio. "Ah how's it go Elio" Elio nods back at the tired man. "Its cause I haven't slept at all for four days" He paused as his eyes searched the guys sitting "And as soon as I finally got some shut eye these bastards woke me up" He finished as he threw a clump of dirt at me
A loud crack went off in front of us, followed by six or seven more immediately. This had our full and undivided attention. Usually the artillery was at random points and times, usually when there was a concentrated shelling that meant an attack was coming. We quickly got serious. The seven of us sitting around the table quickly got up, Felix followed scrambling on the ground to get something he dropped.
"Alright boys, that's my que, good luck out there" Elio said as he got up and grabbed his rifle. "Good luck brother, stay safe out there" I said as I patted him on the shoulder as he started jogging down the line from where he came. More artillery came down. Showing the firing line, and some throwing past the firing line and landing in front of us.
One landed some fifteen meters away and showered us with dirt. Large bursts of machine guns rang out in front of us. We quickly ran up to the edge of the parapet. I peeked my head over the wall and into dead man's land. I could see flashes in the distance. The O.R machine guns going off. In between the volley of artillery, machine guns would open up on the trench, not really sure why they were doing that. The artillery seemed to do a good enough job keeping our guys' heads down.
The artillery went on but we could see some movement in front of our firing line. Some eighty yards away from us. The O.R soldiers were on the attack before the Artillery even let up. And they were making quick ground. I raised my rifle and fired into the crowd of attacking soldiers. While we were further back, we could still do some damage to the advancing O.R.
We had a couple of machine gun parapets lined up in the reserve line just for this reason. In a normal situation we wouldn't, friendly fire is the worst kind of fire. But in all likelihood our guys in the firing trench were all hiding in their dugouts from the artillery so we didn't have to worry about that in these kinds of situations. What was most important was stopping the wave of advancing blue coats.
After rattling off the five rounds I quickly reloaded. The clearing of the dust and smoke of the artillery made it a turkey shoot with our machine guns. The advance had stalled somewhat. Every time a mass of troops tried to go from one shell crater to another they would get mowed down. The real fight began now.
The blue wave seemed to die out, but it only stuttered, not failed. They had gotten into our firing line at some points, I gathered from seeing some of our guys rush through a communication trench some fifty yards down the line. Sporadic light artillery opened up, mainly aiming at our reserve line now. We didn't really take notice, unless there was a close impact, causing us to duck down.
In the midst of our shooting into where we thought the enemy was hiding. A loud whistle rang out to our left. "Company get ready to advance" Word was passed down the line until it reached us. Without saying a word we all got down from the parapet and got ready our gear, as much as we could. Felix had a much harder time finding some of his stuff than the rest of us but we all got our last checks in, and not a moment too soon as soon as we finished a second whistle blew and that was our sign to move.
Not being the first next to a communication trench we had to wait in some traffic before making our way to the firing trench. We were hunched down with the rest of the second platoon. Bruno looked around impatiently in front of me. Snaps and whizzes of bullets flew around us as artillery cracks filled our hearing.
I patted him on the back. "Don't get too worked up, we'll get our action soon" He looked back and his face settled. "Just hope it's not over before we get there" He said grinning. "Don't think we will have to worry about that" Carlo said, peeking his head around me to look at his brother..