The sounds of battle rang out the crisscross of wood-lined trenches, gouged into the earth like dark, muddy scars. Sporadic rifle volleys peaked over rapid machine gun fire, punctuated by the rumbling detonations of the odd artillery shell. Lining the dug-in emplacements, thousands of soldiers on both sides awaited the inevitable call to charge that, in all likeliness, would spell their demise.
“Corporal Scharf!” an officer, perched among the chaos atop a stack of ammunition crates, cried aloud. “We steel ourselves in preparation for the assault! Take your place to support this cursed endeavor!
Scharf, having been resting against the trench wall, straightened up and looked up at the officer with his right eye shut firmly. “Another ritual of mass sacrifice, major? There’s no need to waste men’s lives when the Hurricane will return any moment.”
Though he would offer a challenge, Scharf was well aware that the captain could not be swayed. This particular officer was of the ambitious sort, and each battle averted by the intervention of a formation-destroying Iron Knight was another point against his potential promotion. Thousands of wheels rattled across fate’s rickety tracks to oblivion. Today, there would be no derailment.
“Once again, corporal, I implore you to take your position to support our advance! We can spare not another moment for Lieutenant Sturm’s arrival! These men joined the army of the Reich with expectations of glory and that glory I will not deny them!”
Regardless of his personal feelings, Scharf was outranked. Regretfully, he affixed a thick, steel sniper’s plate to his helmet’s brow and hung another around his lower face, leaving only a four-centimeter gap between them for vision. He then stepped atop a long, wooden platform built into the trench wall, and slid his anti-tank rifle through a small opening in the heavy, reinforced plate which shielded the position. Peering down the custom, high-powered scope, the corporal laid eyes on enemy fortifications and military assets far beyond the objective line.
“Brothers- soldiers of the great German Reich! Today you take your place in history! Your names shall be mentioned alongside the unifiers who crushed Napoleon’s confederation- among the crusaders who conquered the ‘Old Prussian’ heathens! Today you lay down your lives for the prosperity of a hundred generations of German youth yet to breathe their first! Should you fall, your souls will impact the earth with force to stir a quake of such magnitude that it will uproot the very foundation of French heritage, along with their wretched monuments to opulence and hubris!”
Forcefully running his left palm across the crest of the timber trench supports several times, Scharf took in the rough sensation until he caught a long splinter. He winced but, instead of taking any action to remove it, instead chose to focus on the sharp pain, allowing himself to be drawn into the piercing throb.
It would become his only distraction from the senseless carnage about to unfold before his eyes.
Though some found their spirits emboldened by the captain’s words, most men simply exchanged panicked glances or clutched photos of loved ones to say their somber, one-sided goodbyes. For many of the soldiers, their first significant action was also to be their last. Perhaps equally tragic, others would have their long campaigns of shining luck capped off in a ghastly climax.
“C-corporal…” a broken voice stammered from behind Scharf.
Looking over his shoulder, Scharf found himself faced with the pale, sweat-drenched visage of a young private, struggling to keep a grip on his rifle with trembling hands.
“Corporal… w-where is the Hurricane? Y-you said he’d be here… You s-said he’d clear out that enemy line without any i-issue…”
“I did.”
“B-but he is not here…”
“He is not.”
The private’s eyes dropped down to his weapon and then back up at Scharf, whose focus was now directed through his own rifle’s scope, unwilling to speak further. “But you said…”
“I know what I said, private. Prepare to charge.”
Eyes wide with shock, the private just barely managed to sputter, “Y-you’re serious?”
As the German artillery fell silent, it gave the enemy ample warning to prepare for the impending assault. Scharf layered his crosshairs over the gleam of a French helmet, which had freshly popped up just beyond the muzzle of a machine gun.
“We’re going to d-die for nothing, corporal?”
Scharf did not respond.
“Please, Corporal Scharf! Tell me if we’re to die for nothing!”
“I don’t know!” Scharf snapped back, wrenching his head around with rage.
The private fell back against the opposite trench wall, beaming up at him through wet, glistening pearls. “Y-you… don’t know if we’re going to d-die?”
“I… don’t know if it will be for nothing.”
Tears swelling over the corners of his eyes, the young private began to sob. “What? But… but you said…”
Alerted by the commotion, two sergeants stomped across the sodden trench mat and took the quivering soldier by each arm before jerking him back to his feet.
“You said the Hurricane would save us!” the private cried out, drawing the unsettled glares of several nearby troops.
This time, Scharf did not look back. As the screaming soldier was dragged off through a crowd of his shaken peers, the corporal paid mind only to the throb in his hand and the glimmer of his distant prey. When the private’s voice became distant enough to be drowned out by the violent ambiance of war, Scharf looked down at his hand to find the splinter pushed its full length into his flesh. After a moment of silent reflection, the corporal once more cast his beam down his rifle’s telescopic sights.
“Corporal Scharf!” the captain hollered aloud, his saber a streaking gleam as he unsheathed it toward the sky, “On my mark, you will reap the life of your victim! Let your gunfire’s roar be the signal to charge!”
Scharf blinked, somewhat taken aback by the prospect of his shot calling a legion of his countrymen to their graves, but quickly collected himself. He nodded in the affirmative as his index finger gently caressed the trigger of his anti-tank rifle. Losing himself in the pain radiating from his palm, Scharf felt each throb lag just behind the heavy drum of his heart.
“Fire freely!”
The corporal squeezed the trigger and, with a deafening crack, a round ripped from the muzzle of his rifle at extreme velocity, cavitating the surrounding air as it tore across the battlefield before splitting the barrel of the French machine gun and deflecting directly into its operator’s head, obliterating everything from the man’s shoulders upward. The French soldier’s skull was projected by the violent force as ghoulish shrapnel, maiming the men standing closest to him beyond the trench line.
Spurred forth by the shot, German soldiers poured over the top of their lines, swiftly trudging through the blood-soaked mud of no man’s land. Shouts of fear blended with warriors’ cries as the men charged through automatic fire and rifle volleys alike. Though men fell in view of his sights, Scharf remained submerged in his pain, using it to temper his predatory focus.
Each muzzle flash drew the dreaded ire of the reversed lens and, each time, death soon followed. The high velocity of the rounds fired by the anti-tank rifle cracked bone and sundered flesh, leaving little of its victims.
When the guns finally went silent, well over a thousand men lay dead or dying in the viscous muck. Talented as Scharf was, he was but one man, and unable to eliminate every threat posed by the numerically superior French. He had killed a hundred men, destroyed eight machine gun emplacements, and even managed to eliminate two infantry guns placed far to the enemy’s rear. Even this heavy toll, however, fell short of changing the course of the doomed charge. There was nothing more the seventeen-year-old corporal could have done.
Scharf soon caught a glimpse of the scared private’s body not two meters from that of the captain. Both men, officer and enlisted alike, had been felled in the same storm of hot metal. Not one soldier had reached the French lines. Now isolated in the eerie quiet of his empty position, the corporal turned and observed the lifeless trenches around him. Save for the paling bodies of the few men unfortunate enough to be struck in the assault’s opening moment, Scharf was completely alone.
Racking the bolt of his rifle, Scharf breathed in the hot white smoke and residue left lingering in the wake of his final shot. The sharp scent of gunpowder filled his sinuses. Such an olfactory sensation once thrilled the young marksman, but since his conscription into the Great War, it had become synonymous with the horrors of trench conflict. With each inhalation, the faces of a hundred thousand men, muddled together into an indistinct amalgamation of lost souls, filled Corporal Scharf’s mind.
If Hell existed on Earth, then surely he had found it.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
