Over The Top
The next ten minutes are uneventful when, once again, you hear muffled sounds coming from No Man’s Land. You scramble with your rifle and stare into the darkness. You immediately make out human shapes, inching their way towards your post.
– “Who goes there?” you challenge.
– “Calgary!” comes the weary reply.
The password! It must be the men returning from their raid.
– “We’ve got some wounded out here…and a prisoner” says the same voice.
Just then, a flare, coming from the German trenches, flies high into the sky and illuminates the entire landscape. In the artificial light, you can clearly make out the shapes of four men, thirty feet away, who slip inside a large crater to escape detection. Suddenly, a German machine-gun opens up and you see bullets spraying the entire area. Before long, you hear the sound of mortar fire and the resulting blast of shells nearing the crater’s edge. You realize that it might be just a matter of seconds before the men are all cut to pieces.