Terra Incognita, The People's Republic of Verdun, Montietam
3rd Landing Group
July 4th, 1949
12:34 AM
Fire streaked across the night sky and into the tree line as the flamethrower crews advanced. With most of the high command picked off by sniper fire, they were now tasked with paving the way for the rest of the general infantry and armored corps. It was rumored that defoliant agents would be deployed in the next round of air raids. The Private knew that it would be of little use, though.
In his very short time on the front, he had already witnessed the ingenious savagery of his enemy. He saw half a dozen men maimed by a shrapnel bomb. Not even four hours later, he had the pleasure of witnessing a man getting impaled - the aftermath, anyway. He was a flamethrower trooper. Apparently, he had fallen through some foliage into a spiked pit. A spiked pit. It was there, looking at the ruptured body of a man he had never known, that the Private knew for certain that this war would come at a great cost. Likely not to himself, however.
Placed at the far back of the column, he was about as far removed from the shit as one could get. He wasn’t complaining, though. With a wife back home and a newborn on the way, life and limb were just about the most important things to him. Here, trudging through the mud and mosquito laden jungle, he tried not to think about them. He had enough worries as it was. The only thing that mattered now was linking up with Antonescu’s forces at Tuartau.
His thoughts of home were abruptly broken by the halting of the column. A bad omen according to practically anybody. He cautiously chambered a round in his Mosin-Nagant. In the following moments, the standard cacophony of the Verdunese forest dissipated to muteness. The birds stopped in the middle of their songs. The distant rustle of the underbrush ceased. Hell, even the mosquitos quit buzzing for a second.
”AMBUSH!” The cry was anonymous.
The first gunshots came from the head of the column, but were far from being the only ones. They melted in from the trees. On every side, including the rear. Verdunese paratroopers.
Before he knew it, the Private was a inch away from one of them. Wrestling for his life, he attempted to club him with the butt of his rifle, but only succeeded in getting disarmed. The brute threw him to the ground, bowie knife in hand. The two wrestled for a time before the Verdunian pinned him to the ground for good. The Private managed to grab the soldier’s wrist, though, securing him precious seconds to struggle. He grabbed his neck, and didn’t stop grabbing. His veins coursed icy cold, and he knew nothing but his instinct to survive. The paratrooper’s grip on his knife loosened before it dropped to the forest floor. The mans eyes began to bulge as his fingers dug in deeper and curled tighter around his windpipe. He could feel it now, the whole trachea. He pulled. Nothing came out, but the struggle was indeed over.
The Private would never forget the eyes that stared down at him. Those bloated, beady, bloodshot eyes. The eyes of a dead man.
His first kill would haunt him for the rest of his life.
In the interim, he pushed past his own nausea and threw the corpse off of his chest. Staggering in the mud, he looked around.
The chaos was over. He ran up to a passing soldier, still panting from the exertion of his confrontation.
”What happened? Where the hell did they go?” He asked, now realizing he was coated head to toe in mud.
The much older infantryman looked the twenty year old, flicking a cigarette butt onto the ground.
”Dead or back into the woods. Where have you been for the past hour, kid” He laughed before continuing forward.
Time had elapsed so quickly. What felt like twelve seconds had actually been sixty minutes. It sent shivers down his aching spine.
Walking the impromptu road made by the men in front of him, he studied the carcasses of his less fortunate countrymen. The horror on their faces frozen for all eternity to see. He thought about how easily it could’ve been him.
In his bedroll that night, he didnt sleep. He stared drowsily at the canopy, too scared of his own dreams to fall asleep. This would be the case for the next night, and all of his nights to come.
