The endless historical battlefield that began with World War I

On the last day of March, Joseph conducted a comprehensive battalion-wide exercise.

The exercise simulated a 300-meter advance, with "machine gun positions," "barbed wire," and "flank fire." Smoke grenades and signal flares were all used. Jansen and his artillery liaison team squatted at the rear, checking the color of the signal flares against the record sheet and ticking them in their notebooks.

The entire exercise took 22 minutes, with the entire battalion of 730 men advancing 300 meters, and 80 men "killed" in action.

Lieutenant Colonel Chatterley, the battalion commander, looked at the paper in his hand, compared the numbers with the training data for a line-up charge, folded the paper, and said to Joseph:

"I'll go talk to the higher-ups."

Joseph knew what this meant—Lieutenant Colonel Chatterley was going to report the results of this exercise and try to extend the training to other battalions.

He nodded.

"Joseph is practically Edison reincarnated," Wilkins said from the side. He now said this so frequently that it had become a mantra, and he would exclaim it every three days.

O'Connor walked by and flicked him on the head: "Do you know who Edison is?"

"I don't know," Wilkins said, "but he must be a very capable person."

“He was a very capable man,” O’Connor said calmly, “but he invented the phonograph, not how to survive under machine gun fire.” He paused, then gestured towards Joseph with his chin. “This, he invented.”

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

In mid-April, new rumors began to circulate in the camp.

Intelligence from the front indicated that the Germans were deepening their fortifications across the Somme. It was reported that the division headquarters had begun stockpiling ammunition, and that for three consecutive days, artillery shell boxes had been delivered to the rear railway. Furthermore, it was said that discussions were taking place regarding a "summer offensive."

The explanations are becoming more numerous and specific.

One evening, Tom asked Joseph, "Shouldn't we be moving soon?"

Joseph put down the rifle he was wiping and glanced north.

The Somme River is over there. You can't see the river from this side of the camp; you can only see low-lying fields and the occasional flare rising in the distance. The cold white light slowly falls into the darkness, illuminating the ground like a faded old photograph.

"Soon," Joseph said.

Tom grunted in response, looked down at his bulletproof vest, and tightened the front straps.

Joseph stood up and walked toward the shelter.

The flares from the north fell, and darkness returned.

The sound of cannons rang out in the distance, intermittently, a few times, then silence.

The Somme River is waiting.

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

July 1, 1916, 4:40 a.m.

Northern France, the Somme River basin.

It was still dark, but no one was asleep.

Tens of thousands of men huddled in trenches along the entire front, silent, even suppressing their coughs. Seven days of shelling had detonated everything in the vicinity that could be blown up; now that the shelling had stopped, the silence was more suffocating than any previous bombardment.

Joseph leaned against the earthen wall of the trench, closed his eyes, and went through today's procedures from beginning to end.

First time, second time, third time.

He still couldn't rest easy; there were too many things beyond his control.

He could control his troops, control tactics, the timing of smoke grenade deployments, the color of signal flares, and the distribution of barbed wire cutters—but he couldn't control the neighboring battalion on the left flank, nor could he control the artillery shells that would blindly extend according to a predetermined schedule.

Company Commander Captain Wilson was hit by a stray bullet three days ago, which pierced his left shoulder. As he was being carried off on a stretcher, he was still cursing the medic for being too slow.

As for Lieutenant Howard, he died in the shelling last month; a German shell hit his trench directly. The two second lieutenants—Dowkins was wounded in the spine by shrapnel and is still lying in the rear; Reed died in the night raid, a bullet passing through his throat, killing him instantly.

With the officers in charge of Company A either dead or wounded, the division headquarters issued a field appointment a few days ago: Warrant Officer Joseph Linden will act as company commander of Company A, 17th Battalion, and lead Company A in the Battle of the Somme, effective immediately.

Joseph shook his head, stopped thinking about it, and opened his eyes.

O'Connor squatted down beside him, wiped the gun for the seventeenth time, raised it, aimed it at the sky in the darkness, put it down, wiped it twice more, and raised it again.

Tom sat opposite him, his back against the trench, his legs stretched out, the straps of his bulletproof vest neatly tied in front of his chest, his hands on his thighs, palms down, sitting upright.

McDonald closed his eyes, lowered his chin slightly, and his chest rose and fell every now and then as he took deep breaths, trying to calm himself down.

Joseph stood up and glanced at everyone in the trench—four platoons, two hundred men. He remembered every face, what mistakes they had made on the training field, what bad habits they had corrected, and which person had suddenly figured things out after which practice session.

They practiced for three months.

Three months.

"Listen," Joseph said, his voice not loud, but everyone in the trench heard him, "the whistle blows at 7:30, and we follow the artillery fire. Each group moves out in order, according to the rhythm of training. There are no new rules, just what you've practiced for three months."

No one spoke; everyone was watching him.

"Consider it the 101st training session."

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

The seven-day bombardment began on June 24, with the British firing 6 million shells toward the German positions across the Somme.

During those seven days, Joseph stood in the trench every day watching the flashes of exploding shells, feeling a strange sense of peace—because he knew that about half a million of those shells were duds, he knew that the German troops were hiding in bunkers more than ten meters underground, drinking tea and chatting, and he knew that those shrapnel shells hitting the concrete bunkers were no different from tickling an itch.

At 6:30, the shelling intensified dramatically in the last half hour, as if making up for the regrets of the past seven days in the final thirty minutes. Shells rained down on the enemy, explosions echoing one after another, the ground trembled slightly, and fine dirt cascaded down from the top of the trenches.

Harris finished checking the last shift and walked over to Joseph.

"The wire mesh cutters have been distributed."

"A signal flare?"

"Each set contains two red, one green, and one white bead, with two extra red ones as spares."

"Smoke grenade?"

"The first wave of twelve bombs, the bombardiers are already in position."

Joseph nodded and glanced at his watch—6:47.

"Harris," he said, "if I hang up in a bit—"

"You can't die," Harris interrupted calmly before he could finish. "You've been training for three months; it would be a waste to die today."

Joseph paused, then looked up at Harris.

Harris showed no expression.

Joseph said, "I mean, if I die, keep executing the tactics, don't stop because of me."

Harris paused for a second: "Understood."