Imperial Prussi Frontline Trenches

  Date: May 18, 1915

  Time: 4:00 AM

  The rain never ceased. Not the cleansing downpour that could wash away the filth, but a persistent drizzle that seeped everywhere—into uniforms, into boots, into marrow, until the soldiers forgot what it felt like to be dry.

  Water mixed with ankle-deep mud at the bottom of the trenches. In those stagnant pools, rat caraccass floated alongside human waste and rotting food remnants.

  Private Juan Martínez sat slumped against the trench wall lined with rotting wooden planks. His eyes were shut, but he wasn't asleep. In a place like this, sleep was a luxury paid for with one's life. Soon, when dawn broke, the mortars would start falling. It always happened.

  Beside him, Carlos—the sole survivor from their original squad—chewed on hardtack biscuits that tasted like sand mixed with grease. His face was pallid, eyes sunken deep into their sockets. Over the past few weeks, he'd lost ten kilograms. They'd all lost weight.

  "You hear that?" Carlos suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse.

  Juan opened his eyes. "What?"

  "The guys from the neighboring squad. They're saying there's a big attack tomorrow." Carlos swallowed the biscuit with difficulty. "We're going forward. Storming that hill again."

  That hill. Juan didn't even know its name. A meaningless mound of earth with barbed wire, mortar craters, and corpses rotting in no man's land. They'd assaulted it three times already. Each time, they'd lost half the squad. Each time, they'd retreated empty-handed.

  "They're insane," Juan muttered. "We won't make it."

  "We don't have a choice." Carlos gazed at the gray sky. "The Captain says it's orders from the Prussi high command. They need a diversion here while the main force attacks in the north."

  A diversion. Such a neat word for "cannon fodder."

  BOOM!

  The first mortar landed about fifty meters from their position. The vibrations traveled through the mud, making Juan's teeth chatter. Two seconds later, the second mortar. Third. Fourth.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  The iron rain had begun.

  They huddled at the bottom of the trench, hands covering their heads—a utterly useless protection, but the only thing they could do. The ground trembled. The air trembled. Their lungs trembled.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  One explosion landed closer. Juan felt a blast of hot air sweep past his face. Beside him, someone screamed—not a scream of fear, but a scream of agony.

  He turned. An unfamiliar soldier, probably from another squad, lay in the mud with a leg that was no longer recognizable as such. Blood gushed forth in torrents, mixing with the mud into a reddish-brown fluid that flowed into the puddles.

  "HELP!" the soldier screamed. "HELP ME, MOTHER!"

  Mother. The last word uttered by so many here.

  Carlos moved, dragging the soldier behind the trench wall. Juan joined in, though his hands trembled. They wrapped the wound with filthy bandages—the only ones they had—but the blood kept seeping through.

  "Easy now," Carlos said, his voice strangely calm. "Easy, comrade. You'll be alright."

  The soldier stared at him with eyes that were beginning to glaze over. "You... you're from Venez?"

  "I'm Carlos. From Caraccass."

  The soldier smiled—a faint smile, strange on a face pale from blood loss. "I'm... I'm from Marakaibo. My name's... Pedro."

  "Pedro," Carlos repeated, gripping his hand. "You hear that? We've got the same name. Pedro and Carlos. Like in those folk tales."

  Pedro chuckled weakly—or maybe it was the sound of his final breaths. "Folk... tales... Where are... the beautiful princesses... waiting for us to come home?"

  Juan swallowed hard. Inside his head, images of his mother and younger sister flashed. They were waiting. Every night. Listening to the radio. Praying.

  "Yeah," Carlos whispered. "They're waiting."

  Pedro didn't answer anymore. His eyes remained open, staring at the gray sky that continued to pour down cold rain.

  Carlos closed his eyelids with trembling fingers. They sat in silence while mortars continued falling around them, as if the world didn't care that one more life had been extinguished.

  ***

  08:00. The Attack Begins.

  Whistles. Screams. Orders that couldn't be heard over the artillery's roar.

  Juan scrambled out of the trench alongside hundreds of other soldiers. Before them stretched no man's land—a three-hundred-meter expanse of mud pockmarked with craters, tangled with barbed wire, and littered with corpses. At the far end stood that hill with the enemy fortifications they'd never managed to capture.

  "FORWARD! FORWARD!"

  He ran. Or half-ran, half-stumbled, dragged down by mud that sucked at his boots. To his right, someone fell, shot. To his left, someone exploded from a mortar hit, spraying a crimson mist.

  Juan didn't stop. Couldn't stop. If you stopped, you died.

  Enemy machine guns began their chorus—Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—that constant rhythm of death. Soldiers ahead of him crumpled like wheat before a scythe. Some screamed. Some fell silent.

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  He reached a mortar crater, threw himself into it, taking shelter behind a already-bloated corpse. Beside him, a young soldier—barely eighteen, probably—sobbed uncontrollably, calling for his mother.

  "I want to go home," he whimpered. "I want to go home..."

  Juan grabbed his collar. "Listen. You want to go home? Then you have to survive. You have to keep moving. If you stay here, you die."

  The soldier stared at him with empty eyes. "But... but they're over there. They've got machine guns."

  "And we've got orders." Juan's voice was hoarse, barely audible. "Get up. Follow me."

  They rose, running again.

  Twenty meters. Thirty. Another crater. Take cover. Breathe. Look to the side—the young soldier was gone. Left behind. Or dead. He didn't know.

  Ahead of him, barbed wire. Hundreds of meters of wire that needed to be cut with specialized shears—if they'd had shears. They didn't. What they had were bodies. Bodies that could press down the wire, clearing a path for those behind.

  Someone shouted, "COVER THE WIRE!"

  Juan saw a sergeant—a madman, or a hero, or both—hurl himself onto the wire, letting the iron barbs tear through his uniform and flesh. He collapsed on top of it, his body becoming a bridge.

  Other soldiers followed. One by one, they piled onto the wire, forming a staircase of flesh.

  "FORWARD! FORWARD!"

  Juan stepped onto the back of a soldier who was still moaning in pain. He couldn't see his face. Didn't want to see. He just kept moving.

  The hill was now only fifty meters away. Behind him, men kept running, kept dying. But Juan survived. For now.

  He reached the first enemy trench, dropping into it. Inside, three enemy soldiers were caught off guard, scrambling to load their rifles. Juan fired.

  Bang! Bang!

  One fell. Two fell. The third lunged with his bayonet—Juan deflected, feeling the cold steel slice through his left arm, then retaliated with a shot to the chest.

  Silence.

  He stood over those corpses, gasping for breath. His left arm was bleeding, but not severely. He was alive. Still alive.

  From behind, more Venez soldiers began flooding the trench. They'd captured this position—one tiny section of that nameless hill—at the cost of hundreds of lives.

  Juan sat down at the bottom of the trench, leaning against the muddy wall, and wept.

  ***

  Three Days Later.

  The fighting had subsided. Not because they'd won, but because both sides had exhausted themselves. For now, there was an unofficial ceasefire—time to collect the bodies before the stench caused an epidemic.

  Juan's assignment today was clearing a building.

  A two-story stone structure on the outskirts of a small, devastated town. Now it was just a shell with a collapsed roof, walls perforated by bullet holes, and floors covered in debris, dried blood, and corpses.

  He entered cautiously, rifle raised, though they'd confirmed no enemies remained inside. The smell here was different from outside—thicker, sweeter, heavier. The stench of settled death.

  Bodies were scattered across the ground floor. Mostly enemy soldiers, some civilians caught in the crossfire. An old woman in a threadbare shawl, lying beside a cold stove. A young boy, maybe ten years old, clutching a worn-out doll, half his face missing from shell fragments.

  Juan paused for a moment, closing his eyes. He couldn't think about them. Mustn't. If he started thinking, he'd go mad.

  He climbed to the second floor.

  The stairs were half-collapsed but still passable. Upstairs, more corpses. Enemy soldiers who'd taken shelter here when the mortars struck. Some lay on makeshift beds of mattresses dragged into corners. Others sprawled in the hallway, as if they'd been trying to escape.

  Juan began his work. His job was to check their pockets, collect documents, identification—anything that might be useful for intelligence. Then drag the bodies outside for burial in mass graves.

  First body. Empty pockets.

  Second body. A photo of a wife and children, stained by blood that had long since blackened. Juan set it aside in a separate pouch—perhaps someday it could be returned to the family. Perhaps.

  Third body. A young soldier, probably his age. His face was destroyed by shrapnel—only half remained. His body was rigid, hands clenched against his chest as if holding something.

  Juan pried open that fist. A photograph fluttered to the floor.

  He picked it up, turned it over. And the world stopped.

  The photo—stained by blood that had turned brown, slightly torn at the corner—showed a young woman. A light blue dress. Long hair flowing freely. A polite smile, somewhat shy, like someone unaccustomed to having their picture taken.

  Isabella Guerrero.

  The President's daughter.

  Juan stared at the photo, then at the corpse before him. The destroyed face, unrecognizable. The uniform of a Venezi soldier—still discernible from the remnants of shoulder insignia. A body that might once have been strong, now just rotting flesh and bone.

  Who was this?

  He reached into the corpse's pocket, searching for identification. A worn leather wallet, soaked by mud and blood. Inside, a military identification card.

  Private Diego Martínez. Age 20. Origin: Caraccass.

  "Diego Martínez? I've heard that name... the President's nephew who volunteered for the front lines?"

  Juan sat on the floor beside the corpse. Isabella's photo was still in his hand. Her face—still smiling, still alive—contrasted starkly with the devastation around him.

  He carefully wiped the dried blood from the photograph. Isabella's face remained intact—as if protecting it, even from death.

  Juan stood. He had to finish his task. There were more bodies to collect, more reports to write, more war to endure.

  He folded the photo and tucked it into his uniform pocket, close to the photos of his mother and sister.

  Outside, the rain began again. That ceaseless drizzle.

  Juan dragged Diego's corpse out of the building, joining the long line of bodies waiting for burial. No ceremony. No prayers. Just a large hole in the ground, quicklime to mask the stench, and hope that there wouldn't be an outbreak.

  As Diego's body fell into the pit alongside dozens of others, Juan touched his pocket—Isabella's photo was still there.

  "I didn't know you, Diego," he whispered. "But I'll make sure this photo reaches where it belongs. I promise."

  He didn't know how. Or when. Or if it was even a good idea. But he'd made a promise. To a dead man who could no longer hear.

  ***

  That Night. The Frontline Trenches.

  A small campfire burned at the bottom of the trench—forbidden, but who cared? Tonight was cold and wet, and the soldiers needed warmth even if it meant risking sniper fire.

  Juan sat near the fire, watching the dancing flames. In his hand, Isabella's photo. He'd looked at it hundreds of times today, trying to understand.

  "Where'd you get that photo?"

  Carlos—his only remaining friend—sat down beside him, offering a cup of hot coffee (or at least the black liquid they called coffee). Juan accepted it but didn't answer.

  "Juan." Carlos stared at him seriously. "What is that?"

  Juan finally handed over the photo. Carlos took it, studying Isabella's face in the flickering firelight.

  "That's the President's daughter, isn't it? The eldest one?"

  Juan nodded.

  "Where'd you get it?"

  "From a corpse. Today, in that building." Juan's voice was flat. "The young man—his name was Diego. Diego Martínez."

  Carlos froze. "The President's nephew? The one they've been gossiping about?"

  "Maybe. He was holding this photo in his hand. Probably kept it in his pocket, close to his heart. Maybe he was looking at it before... before he died." Juan sipped his coffee. It tasted bitter and burnt. Like life itself.

  Carlos returned the photo. "You're going to return it?"

  "I have to. It belongs to her."

  "I mean... to the President's daughter. You're going to return it personally?"

  Juan didn't know. How could he? A lowly private like him had no access to the palace. Even if he did, what would he say? "Miss, here's your photo, taken from your dying cousin in a foreign land. Oh, and he kept it close to his heart. Maybe he loved you. But we don't know for sure because he died with his face blown off."

  Carlos read his hesitation. "That's heavy."

  "Yeah."

  They sat in silence, accompanied by the distant artillery that never truly ceased. The drizzling rain continued, making the fire hiss and creating steam that mixed with the smoke.

  "You know," Carlos said suddenly, "I have a younger sister. Her name's Maria. Fifteen years old. She always asked me to buy her books, but I never had the money. One day, I promised I'd buy her the most beautiful book after this war ended."

  "You going to keep that promise?"

  "If I make it home, yeah." Carlos smiled bitterly. "If I don't... I hope there's someone like you who finds my photo and returns it to Maria. So she knows I was thinking of her until the end."

  Juan stared at the fire. "I'll try. For everyone whose photos are waiting back home."

  Carlos patted his shoulder. "You're a good soldier, Juan. Too good for this place."

  "No one's too good for hell," Juan replied. "Hell accepts everyone."

  The fire continued burning, warming them for a while. In the distance, mortars began falling again. The night was still long, and tomorrow would bring more death.

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