Nothing. He hears something.

Graeber licks his lips and finds them cracked and dry. He tastes iron and then holds his breath. He glances down and then at the edge of the trench.

He pushes past Karl and further down the trench in a frantic way. Then, finally, he pokes over and sees a German stationary tank with a white turret dug deep into the earth. It has sandbags and bricks around it. It isn’t moving.

He ducks back down and feels the throbbing in his heart. “Tanks…” he mumbles at first, but then he sees the faces of the others. “Tanks…!” His voice is now clear and earns the glances of the others.

“Panzer!!” Graeber cries out. “Feindliche Panzer!!”

Up and down the trench, there’s a great stirring of men. The sound of metal clattering together as the infantry spring to their positions is both wild and familiar. There are orders beneath the readying of the infantry as noncoms begin organizing their men for another battle.

Graeber races down. “Mach dich bereit!! Sie kommen!!”

Dieter looks awkward and then outward; his eyes are going to everything everywhere, searching the treeline that hides their attackers. The rumbling is now unmistakable, even in the shouting and running. He turns and follows Graeber as he sprints down the trench. “Was machen wir?!”

He is ignored at first, so he grabs Graeber and asks again. “Was machen wir!?!”

“Folge mir,” Graeber grabs the boys collar and stares into his eyes. “Und hör mir zu!”

Then, above the rumbling of Russian armor and German orders— there’s a grand shout— Russian soldiers. Graeber freezes and tightens his grip on the Mauser rifle in his hands. He curses and jumps out of the trench to another hole. A lone machine gunner mans it. He’s older, probably a veteran of Operation Barbarossa. Around him are belts of ammo and grenades of all kinds. Sticks, eggs, and Russian. Beside them is a 88 cannon, concealed with camouflage. Much like the German tank Graeber saw earlier, it’s dug into the earth. Nothing about it is obvious. He considers the muzzle and the crew behind it managing the munitions. They’re a fair distance from it, but he knows the blast will be unpleasant when the canon is used in anger. It’s not too late to move, so he jumps out of the machine gun nest and sprints to another trench.

Wehrmacht soldiers occupied the line, their faces were gnawed with fatigue, but their eyes were wild with survival— an eagerness to kill the attackers so that they may live another day.

Graeber jumps in, and Dieter follows. As their feet hit the ground, the 88 cracks its vicious load and strikes something explosive down range—a direct hit on something evil. Machine guns start to scream, and a steady stream of rifle fire begins to join the sudden start of the conflict. Graeber immediately finds a spot to fall into and shoots the attackers too. A mass of white-clad men and white tanks are rolling toward them. Black smoke plumes from the struck tank and an ungodly number of men are spotted before disappearing under a red mist. Some simply vanish or are gone from a mortar blast.

MP40s burp down range. The cannons shout—the MG42s rip. The rifles are steady. But it’s not enough to maintain the distance.

Soviet infantry gets closer and closer to the defensive lines. They are torn to shreds by machine gun emplacements, but they’re like offerings for foolish gods. There aren’t enough tanks to pose a threat, but the endless number of men start trickling inside, and they blow up the big guns and kill their crews.

The outer line, where Graeber is, starts to engage in close quarters. Mausers and Mosins are used as clubs, like in a scene from the Great War before submachine guns suddenly appear in the fray. The shooting intensified, and soon, grenades exploded somewhere in the trench; inflicting casualties on both sides alike.

There is, however, not just one grenade. As Dieter struggles to survive, a grenade blast blows up near him and knocks him down. Graeber is almost panic-stricken as he’s almost jabbed by a bayonet; he recovers quickly, however, and shoots the aggressor with a snapshot reaction.

On the trench floor, there are wounded, moaning in piles of bodies. Some in white, others in speckled tunics— the odd display of **** is intimate as the smell of gunpowder, and blood fills the interior. Graeber grimaces as the Russians begin their retreat.

The smell sickens him, but he decides to find Dieter before crawling out. Dieter has gore all over his face and he looks deranged.

“Komme,” Graeber slings his rifle and reaches for him. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dieter’s eyes are unfocused at first but otherwise unharmed after the engagement. He hugs Graeber for support and leans on him as they walk out.

The village doesn’t look any different but has become busy. Medics and soldiers are running everywhere in every direction. Dieter falls to the snowy ground and starts to sob. Graeber shifts away and runs over to the trucks.

The trucks were emptied of supplies but were now full of wounded men covered in bloody bandages and splints. Something smells rotten. Something smells shitty. The uniforms are covered in questionable stains. Graeber had seen worse in Stalingrad but chose not to compare the two situations to find the similarities.

He filtered down the road, finding every truck to be moaning with the casualties that were plaguing this position. He was once blind to it, but now that the situation has been exposed to him, Graeber is once again struck by the hopelessness of the war effort. There are simply too many soldiers to replace.

Graeber looks at the trench, remembering Dieter crying in the filthy snow. He is a replacement, a baby by most standards. Graeber looks at the men in the trucks, the veterans. The experienced. The trained. Knots form in the pits of Graeber’s otherwise empty stomach. Everyone in these trucks is dire to the war effort, losing or not.

A noncom bumps into Graeber, and he is soon barking at him with orders, and for a moment, Graeber starts an argument that he didn’t intend to have. It only ends without a court martial because Dieter materializes between them.

“We have to get all these wounded men out of here now, don’t we?!” Dieter's eyes are glossy as the no com barks. “Don’t we?!?”

The noncom steps back to regard the trucks that is loaded with all branches of the German army. “Don't you see we are trying?” Graebee says loudly.

Dieter clambers into the driver's seat. Graeber is grabbed and thrown against the truck by a noncom, who jabs his meaty finger into his chest.

“If our paths ever cross again and you speak against me, I’ll rip you limb-to-limb. You got that?”

Frankly speaking, Graeber couldn’t give a damn about this noncom or his threats, but he knew that the only way he would get out of this man’s line of vision was to jump in with Dieter and pretend he wasn’t escaping a severely fractured position. So, he nods and says something that indicates some form of respect before he bolts to join Dieter.

Dieter is rubbing the tears from his eyes and brushing his uniform as though his survival depends on the condition of his uniform. Graeber shakes his head but doesn’t confront his meaningless activity. They can’t move until the column does it first.

When the trucks start to move, he tells Dieter to follow. He suspected a delay or that he’d slam his foot on the gas, but Dieter is working remarkably well under the current conditions. Graeber reaches for the map and tries to read what is on it. The nearest field hospital isn’t far, but they were still at least 20 minutes away.

Graeber darts his eyes over at Dieter and sighs. “How are you feeling?”

Dieter doesn’t answer at first, so he repeats the same thing, this time with more volume in his voice. Dieter winces and looks over at him. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. I nearly died!”

“Sink or swim,” Graeber tells Dieter. “It’s obvious we’re getting ready for another kind of operation. You’ll experience worse things.”

The skies open up, and the sun spills over the road. Graeber leans back in his chair and looks at the men in the back. Bundled men are laid on in the bed of the truck. The stink of decay is heavy. “Fucking Hell,” Graeber mumbles. “We’re delivering corpses by the time we get to the field hospital.”

Dieter swallows. “Do you think they got through anywhere?”

“I don’t know,” Graeber admits. “They’ve gotten through before…”