The endless historical battlefield that began with World War I

The German artillery bombardment began the following afternoon.

It sounded like the usual harassing shelling, dropping a few rounds on British positions every few hours, not for precision or large-scale casualties, but just to remind you that no place is safe.

The toilets were attacked, the canteen was attacked, and the well on the supply line was blocked by a shell last week.

But this time the landing point was off.

Joseph immediately sensed the problem when the first shell landed—the timing was right, the interval was right, it seemed to be the same routine harassment that afternoon, but the landing point was wrong.

The distance was short, but the direction was very accurate, so accurate that it didn't seem like it was thrown casually.

That's not how you do harassment.

He mentally compared this landing point with the records of the past few days. Those previous shots were scattered and random. But today's shot showed someone carefully calculating the coordinates.

"Everyone move north," he said, "now."

"Now?" O'Connor turned her head. "Isn't this just the same few shots every afternoon—"

"This isn't harassment," Joseph said. "The direction is right. The next shot will adjust the distance, and the next one will take away the trench entrance. Do you want to verify my judgment there?"

O'Connor glanced at the entrance to the trench, then at Joseph, and stood up, patting the mud off his knees.

"I suddenly feel that the scenery in the north is better."

Then he moved north.

The second shot landed 30 meters closer than the first.

This is adjusting the distance. The trap has been set; the next shot will be fatal.

A century later, he wrote more than one post on military forums discussing this German military procedure. First, determine the direction, then the distance; once the zigzag is established, the third shot is the effective firing.

Under the cover of the afternoon's routine shelling, they casually knocked out an entrance to a communication trench. This observer is something else.

The third shell landed, hitting the trench wall on the left side of the trench entrance, blasting a gap that sent dirt and broken planks flying out.

But there was no one there anymore.

O'Connor stared at the new opening for a few seconds, then turned to Joseph and cleared his throat.

"The scenery to the north is indeed better."

****************

The fifth shell landed on Black's side.

The shell made a hole in the middle of the main trench. Joseph heard the shouts from that side, climbed up the trench wall and looked over—the top of the trench in Blake's section had collapsed. They hadn't had time to reinforce it according to Joseph's plan a couple of days ago, and now the collapsed soil and wooden beams covered half of the trench, burying two people inside, with only their legs showing.

The others were frantically pulling things out.

Joseph vaulted over the trench wall and jumped across, MacDonald following. The two of them grabbed one leg each and pulled him out. The trapped soldier emerged with a whoosh of rubble; one had hit his head, blood streaming down his hairline, while the other seemed to have twisted his leg and cried out in pain.

As he pulled the man out, Joseph glanced down at the soldier's twisted leg.

His boots were soaked through; water had seeped up all the way up. If he took them off, he'd bet his toes were black.

He didn't say anything, but simply called the medics to help Blake clear away the mud and debris that had fallen, and to help those who needed to be sent to the rear. After finishing his task, he returned to his own trench.

Blake stood still, without moving.

He glanced in Joseph's direction—the embankment, the drainage outlet, the ammunition depot had been raised, and sandbags weighed down the double-layered wooden beams on the trench roof, all neatly arranged. The shell had opened that opening, but everyone in that section had been moved; nothing was lost.

Then he looked down at his own section.

The water was above the boot openings. Water had already seeped into the ammunition depot. Two men, just pulled from the water, lay on stretchers; one had hit his head, the other twisted his leg. His boots were off, and his toes were black—Joseph had mentioned this. Blake hadn't taken it seriously at the time.

He stood there for a while, then bent down, shook the water out of his boots, and turned to clean up the collapsed section of the trench.

**************

Blake arrived that evening.

He stood at the junction of the two trenches, glanced down at the scaffolding on Joseph's side, then looked at the thin stream of water flowing from the drainage outlet, remained silent for a long time, and then spoke awkwardly.

"Linden, um... how did you do the drainage?"

Joseph told him how to change the slope, where the exit was, and how to find the timber for the scaffolding.

Blake nodded, wrote it down, turned to leave, then stopped, his back to Joseph, and said in a low voice, "I take back what I said yesterday... about fixing the garden."

Then he left.

O'Connor, standing nearby, took the cigarette from behind her ear, glanced at Blake's retreating figure, and turned to Joseph to ask, "How's Parker's leg?"

"It will take a few more days to see."

"Well," O'Connor said, "then we'll wait a few days."

*****************

Around the ninth day, while changing his socks in the morning, Parker took off his boots, looked down at himself for a long time, and didn't say anything.

Joseph walked over, squatted down, and took a look.

The color of my toes has returned to normal. The skin is still a little dry, but the signs of softening have subsided, the wrinkles between my toes have flattened, and the darker color at the edge of my left little toe is now the same as the surrounding area.

Joseph stood up, patted Parker on the shoulder, said nothing, and turned back.

Parker stood behind him in silence for a moment, then put on his boots, stood up, patted the mud off his trousers, picked up a shovel, and went to continue digging the extension trench.

O'Connor sat on the bench, watching this scene, took the cigarette from behind his ear, put it in his mouth, and bent down to strike a match.

The flames were lit, he took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, leaned against the trench wall, and looked up at the gray sky.

Tom, standing nearby, asked, "...Did you light a cigarette?"

"Um."

"Didn't you say you were waiting for something worth celebrating?"

O'Connor twirled the cigarette in her hand, glanced at Parker, who was engrossed in shoveling mud, working very diligently.

"Parker's toe is healed," O'Connor said. "That's something to celebrate."

In the afternoon, McDonald came over and said that the students in Class C and Class D next door were working on the drainage system today.

Joseph didn't ask where the information came from; he simply nodded.

O'Connor tapped his cigarette ash and said lazily, "Harris has sent out the blueprints."

"Um."

"Is this all you're going to do?"

“I said, whether it works is more important than what you say,” Joseph said. “Now it has worked.”

The battalion headquarters' reply was delivered personally by Harris. It was a folded piece of paper with the battalion commander's instructions written on it: "Trial implementation throughout the battalion, with each company reporting on its implementation status weekly."

Harris handed the paper to Joseph, paused for a moment, and then added, "The battalion commander has spoken with Hodges."

"How did it go after the talk?"

"Downgraded by half a level," Harris said, "the reason being delayed medical treatment. There were two people in Blackburn whose toe conditions were already documented, Hodges reviewed them, but nothing was done."

He finished speaking, turned around, and left.

****************

That evening, we received a notice that there would be an operation the next day, scheduled for 5:40 a.m. Each squad should check their equipment and get some sleep.

Joseph didn't sleep well that night.

It's not because I don't know, it's because I know too much.

Every attack he participated in followed the same procedure: before the attack, the artillery would bombard the German positions, blasting holes in the barbed wire and destroying the machine gun positions—at least theoretically. Then the artillery fire would stop, the whistle would sound, and everyone would climb out of the trenches, cross the muddy area in the middle where no one belonged, and rush into the German trenches.

The problem is that the German army also understood this process.

They dug deep underground tunnels, over ten meters deep, so the artillery shells couldn't reach them. As soon as the artillery fire stopped, they would climb out of the tunnels, set up their machine guns, and wait. There was a window of about two to three minutes between the cessation of artillery fire and the start of machine gun fire.

A 120-meter-wide open area with three layers of barbed wire.

He calculated the number repeatedly on his bunk, but couldn't come up with a result that satisfied him.

One hundred and twenty meters, less than twenty seconds on a track. But that's a track.

This wasn't a drill ground. He had to carry thirty kilograms of equipment—rifles, bullets, grenades, and an entrenching tool. The ground in the no-man's-land wasn't a solid dirt track like on a drill ground; it was mud, craters from artillery fire, ankle-deep mud, and remnants of barbed wire that could snag anyone. You couldn't walk in a straight line; you had to go around, you had to crawl, you had to use your hands to support yourself as you climbed up the slippery crater walls. When the barbed wire caught on you, you had to stop to free yourself—and stopping meant death.

He calculated that it would take him about four to five minutes to walk 120 meters.

There was another matter—during his afternoon reconnaissance, he heard the sound of MG08s being tested in the treeline on the German left flank. There were two, not one. The attack plan hadn't considered fire from that angle. He needed to inform Lieutenant Buxton about this before dawn.

He leaned closer to the trench wall and closed his eyes.

There was some movement nearby, and he opened his eyes to look—it was Allen, the messenger transferred from B Company, huddled two steps away from him, his boots still on, his eyes wide open, staring at the dark, no-man's-land ahead, motionless.

Joseph glanced at him. Eighteen years old, Yorkshire accent, had been there for three weeks, but still looked like a new recruit.

"Go to sleep," Joseph said.

Allen turned around, paused for a moment, and said softly, "I can't sleep, sir."

"I know," Joseph said, "but I still need to sleep. I have things to do tomorrow."

He closed his eyes and said nothing more.