Insaeldor wrote:January 12th, 1917.Dearest Ksenia, the time since the last offensive has been hell. The snow has been our ally and our enemy. While its stopped the austro-hungarian guns from firing at us, it has buried us. It hasn't been cold enough for the ground to freeze so we battle the mud as much we do the snow. Artillery shells have turned the no man's land into a soup, mud with the torn roots of trees, grass, bones, the rotted flesh of the dead gave the soil a putrid green color. Finally it was topped with a layer of snow. The loveless dead trees still stand, charred and splintered by artillery strikes.
Our commanding officer, Brigadier Golitsyn has been ripping into us as action on the the front has calmed down. Just the other day he sent us out to go and set up barbed wire. The austro-hungarians didn't shoot even though it be hard for a blind man not to see us. The men in the enemy trench did not fire back. So instead Brigadier Golisyn ordered use march towards their trench, we were to raid the trench and bring back evidence of our success. Either we came back with the identification disk of a Austro-Hungarian soldier or we came back with an injured comrade.
We came back, the fire was reluctant, I bet the boys in those trench felt betrayed, I know we felt like we betrayed them. We attacked the trench, an hour later we went back to ours. We had one casualty. A boy named Oleksander Kylmishenko, only 16 years old. He was stabbed in the gut by an enemies bayonet. The boy who stabbed him couldn't have been much older than him. We heard the boy yell out something in Ukrainian as he stabbed him, crying and shaking. If it had been any other moment I'd have turned the other cheek, his guilt was punishment enough. However in the horrors of the trench you don't have time to notice these things, only to notice them in reflection. I shot the boy with my revolver, the first shot hit his arm, the second his lungs. Its It's been a week since and I’m still in a state of melancholy. I don't think I can ever forget those soft green eyes and light blonde hair. This was different than the average kill, this was a young boy forced to act through no will of his own. He just reacted as he was trained to do. The men of the front were not something I regularly felt grief about. They had knowledge and agency. Much like myself.
Foolish bravery still drove the men. A man had been shot by the enemy nearly 25 meters from the trench. He was shrieking, howling in pain. No one would have paid it mind, it was a common sound to the old guard. However this poor man lived on for three more days. Finally a man in the squad, Yuri Romenevsky ran out and was shot. A few hours later another one, Ludovik Glukhev went to go help, he was also shot. The next morning the man was still howling and a third man, Boris Drzhua went out. He like the others was shot, he crawled back in and died of his wounds. The mans howling stopped afterwards and we assumed he died. Two days later we were at to negotiate a 2 hour ceasefire to recover the bodies. Romanevsky and Glukhev were found stiff and rigid in the iced over snow. The man they went to save was also found. He was found with his first stuffed deep into his mouth. Assumedly he didn't want anyone anyone else to hear him and come after him. The doctors think he finally died of exposure just a few hours before we went out. It's hard for the men to listen to the suffering of another without wanting to do something. The army is a brotherhood after all. You'd always put yourself in harm's way to help your kin.
Dysentery has also ravaged the platoon. We are restricted in how we can take care of our business. The latrine flooded a week ago. One man couldn't hold it and went for a shell hole to do his business and was riddled with machine gun fire. Most of the men have been forced to defecate in the trench and then cover it with snow, or defecate within their Papakha and then throw it over the side of the trench. However in the brief days of sunny thaw you get rushes of water in the trench, sometimes almost knee high. Many times the melted show would mix with this defecation and pool into our trench. We would then be standing in a the soup of mud, water, defecation, and if the battles were harsh beforehand then the muddy foul water would have a greenish film on top. This was from the putrefied fat from the dead bodies in no man's land. This only perpetuated illnesses within our unit.
Luckily the last of the letter censors for the platoon was shot for mutiny. So I have confidence I can get this to you without the army molesting it. I need you to know the horrors here. I want you to know my situation. I have been denied leave as this hell grows darker. I can not be there for the birth of Alyona. It hurts me deeply but if I resist I'll be shot and miss her regardless. I wanted to send you this message now that I can so that, if I die in the coming months, she will have the knowledge of this industrial butchery. As the newest of god's children I want her to have an image of these horrors and work to make sure slaughter on this scale is never again repeated. If I am to die I wish to have this for her. Hopefully she’ll pass it onto her children as well.
I also hope the news from Petrograd is not as its heard. Some of the soldiers are whispering about the fall of the Tsar and the rise of a man named Trotsky. I've read his speeches, the soldiers smuggling in the transcripts. Sadly, men who can’t put there trust into the state or god will sadly be drawn to the promises of fools, a man promising a four hour work day at the double the wages has no grasp of the world of money. But with an impotent tsar, a star reading tsarina, and that unkempt savage Rasputin running the country I have no reason to support them either. When the people can't tell if the prince is the son of the Tsar or of Rasputin how can the trust the royal establishment?
If what the men are saying is true. I want you to leave and stay with mother in Vanadzor. Hopefully the arrogance of the peasantry and aristocracy will not be an issue there. Make sure that if you do that, Konstantin helps his babushka around the garden.
Lovingly, Timofey.
Zauryad-praporshchik Timofey Karapyan would be executed for mutinous actions in the field on the 1st of February 1917. He would leave behind a widow, Ksenia Simanova, her son Konstantin and a daughter Alyona. He like many other was forced to endure hardship of the great war. 3,239,000 soldiers would be killed, Roughly 2,000,000 Russian civilians would also perish on the eastern front alone. The Russian Empire would account for nearly 2,250,000 of the military dead. After the war a further 3,100,000 russian would be killed or wounded in the ensuing civil war. In total nearly 15,000,000 russians would be dead or wounded by the end of hostilities in 1923. When the Bolsheviks finally ended the unified White Movement military.
However the scope of our story is only focused on the men of 3rd Platoon of the 128th Light Infantry Regiment. Typically called the "microcosm of the Empire" for its diversity. However that wasn't originally the case. The Unit has its origins in Vladikavkaz where the unit pulled from the caucasus region. Georgians, Aziri, Armenian, and Chechens made up the bulk of the unit, this did not last. During the Battle of Dunajetz nearly half the regiment was killed or taken.prisoner after there line was flanked by German soldiers. From that point on reservists coming in to fill the ranks would make up the rest of the unit. From Murmansk to Kapan, Warsaw to Vladivostok. Men from across the empire filled in the ranks.
1915 saw them being beaten back at every turn, consistent battery and retreat. Another half of the regiment was lost as the germans chased the Russians out of Poland. The unit ended up in Ternopil. However the regiment found itself on the foothills of the carpathian mountains as the Brusilov Offensive tore into the Austro-Hungarians.
Now the regiment looks on into the vastness of the Austro-Hungarian frontier. The army ravaged by mutiny, communist agitators helped to destabilize the capital. The railroads did not operate, peasants in the rural countryside slaughtered those they saw as threats weather it be loyalist or bolshevik. In January of 1917 the Russian state is sitting on the edge of one it's most historically defining moments. However you, you get to sit in a trench and get shot at.
This is the tentative opening to an OP for a WWI rp I'm planning. Figured I'd post it here and get some feed back. Trying to really capture the horrors of a front less explored. Trying to capture just how horrific it was for Russian soldiers. The RP should be out by next week.
There is one flaw with your opening: armies on the Eastern Front did not fight in trenches.
Though perhaps not today, mayhaps the weekend.
