"GAS! GAS! Get yer fuckin' masks on, now!". The orders seem to come as ferociously as the battered tin canisters containing the sickly green smoke-like substance as they flew over stunned heads, mouths agape in horror. Hands clumsily fumbled with small cube boxes, stained with the shrapnel of Earth that had been dislodged by shells hurled at their trench for the past three days and nights. The men reached inside their respective boxes, withdrawing their masks, before hastily strapping the fraying ties around their heads. Pvt. Wiltshire did the same. He was accustomed to following orders without question after spending two miserable years sat in a dingy hole in the ground. It was as much of a home to the rats and fleas as it was to him and his fellow soldiers. "House mates" the soldiers had jokingly remarked whenever fresh-faced young men had been unfortunate to land themselves in the same trench, questioning why they shared their living space with such creatures. Pvt. Wiltshire himself had been in the very same position not two months ago, but here they all were now, huddled together under the cold night's sky. Maybe Pvt. Wiltshire would have felt cosy, or even safe, being shoulder to shoulder with gruff looking men that he was quick to call friends, yet something about his situation made him feel far from safe. "Stop daydreamin' and get a move on!". The dull thuds of rifle butts bumping together out of lack of concentration seemed to harmonise with the whistling and shrieking of nearby artillery coupled with the zipping of stray bullets. The coarse material of their uniforms rubbed together as the soldiers waded through the marshy texture of the soil underfoot. They found themselves facing crudely made ladders, precariously leaned against the trench wall. Although he could not see the other men's faces, obscured by their masks that looked like they were straight out of a nightmare, Pvt. Wiltshire knew that they would all have the same look on their faces, the same as his face. He bit his lip, desperately trying to release a torrent of adrenaline in the form of pain, but his lips were too cold to feel the sharp bite of teeth clamping down. Yet the warm trickle of blood that pooled at the back of his mouth, slowly sliding down his throat squeezed tight out of fear, gave him some comfort. " If I can bleed..." he thought, "then I'm still alive".
"Formation!". The booming voice of his CO had yanked him out of his comforting thoughts. Like pedigree dogs, trained to obey their owner's commands, the men around Pvt. Wiltshire assembled into an orderly formation; five-men lines that stretched as far as he could see out of his foggy eye holes. "Prepare!", the men closest to the ladder hoisted themselves up onto the step made out of compacted mud, frozen solid by the air which often send stabbing pains up the hands and fingers of men too stupid not to wear their fingerless gloves. Rifles were removed from their holsters. They seemed to grin and grimace at the prospect of their bullets ripping through German and Austrian flesh, as the light emanating from the flares above shone brightly, exposing their evil features. "Aim!". A deathly silence filled the men's ears: no bombs, no bullets, nothing. Pvt. Wiltshire could hear himself breathe for the first time in two years. His raspy breath drew in quickly and seemed to rattle about in his lungs, made frail by screaming and shouting, before pumping out a thick white mist into the lenses of his eye sockets, blurring his vision momentarily before the cold had chance to fill his mask again through the many cracks and tears, returning his sight to him as the mist sulked away. A high pitched whistle broke the silence first, like a kettle coming to boil. Confused, the men looked about erratically for the source. The CO's whistle still dangled around his wiry neck, swaying in the harsh wind as if trying to alert the soldiers that it wasn't the one making the sound. Pvt. Wiltshire jerked his head upwards, but it was too late. The shell was already only thirty-or-so foot off of the ground. All Pvt. Wiltshire could do was tumble to the watery mud that lay beneath him, sheltering is face and flimsy metal helmet underneath his bony arms. Darkness enveloped him. "Is this how I die?"...
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