Rise

August 28, 1916.

"Oy, Sutton, to your feet lad," the vaguely Irish voice spoke to me in the early dawn of the morning. I stirred momentarily, bearing my surroundings, realizing I'm in the same hell as I was last night. I looked around, looking at the mud, and the blood, my friends and brothers in arms tense and worried.

I rose to my feet, Paul helping me rise. I allowed myself to balance on my feet before I rubbed my eyes, opening my eyes to see the same desolate, dead, and depressed fields that were No Man's Land. Barbed wire and dead trees covered the land, holes of artillery shells found untouched in several places, with craters formed by other shells, bodies sprawled across the mud.

"What's this you waking me up for?" I asked Paul, slightly upset.

"Cap'n told me to wake you, 'e said it was important," he replied.

"What can be so important in a time like this? I don't see any of the gas coming in or Germans running over No Man's Land."

Paul kept quiet, only motioning to me to follow behind him. My ragged boots sludged through the mud filled trench, the clouds overhead blocking out the sun, only furthering the melancholy emotions we all shared.
We stepped into the hollowed out excuse of a meeting room, a small room held up by wooden beams, the walls and ceiling made entirely of dirt, a small dim lantern illuminating the wooden table in the center, a map sprawled across it with various colors and red markings drawn all over it.

"You sleep well enough to walk?" Captain Davies asked me without looking up from the table. I gave a slight nod.

"We've got orders from command, it's supposedly top secret, but I doubt that's how it is going to be kept. Sooner or later, it is not confirmed when, but we have been chosen to test a new weapon in the field," Captain Davies continued," Command won't tell us much other than it's supposed to devastate the German lines."

"Now what is this weapon exactly, do we have any idea exactly how it's going to devastate the Germans?" The Scottish voice belonging to James Sheppard spoke, his gaze moving to meet the Captain's.

The Captain simply shook his head before speaking, "Tell Weaver what is happening, I do not want to find whatever side of the trench he has ended up drunk in this time."

We all collectively left the room to go tend to our own duties. I, however, was still allowed to rest, so I went back to the crate which Paul found me rested upon and laid my rifle up against the wooden walls lining the trench and sat down on the splintered crate, shutting my eyes and letting myself drift off once again.

I was suddenly awoken from my sleep, rain pounding down from above us in the sky, the men all around me yelling over the sounds of explosions coming from in front of and just behind the trench. I scrambled to my feet and snatched up my helmet beside me in the mud, placing it on my head and tying the strap to hold it in place, then grabbed my rifle and went to the wooden platforms lining the trench to help get a view of No Man's Land.
"Tozer?" I yelled out, expecting Paul's voice to respond. Nothing came.

I watched all the men around me run through the trench to the places where they were needed the most. The sound of machine gun fire either side of me and across the dead fields rang out through the air. The Germans could be heard yelling throughout the trench, what they were yelling, I could not tell.

Finally getting my senses, I opened the bolt of my rifle, a standard issue and worn SMLE Mk III. I reached into the pouch resting on the right side of my waist and pulled out a stripper clip, and placed it in the loading bay, pushing the rounds down then taking out the clip. I repeated the process, then closed the bolt and rose and placed my rifle on the sand bags of the trench and aimed out across the fields. I could only see the muzzle flash of German rifles and machine guns, but no men.

I got down from the crate I was standing atop and decided I needed to find the rest of my squad. I grabbed one of the soldiers nearby, running through the trench, "Where's Captain Davies?" I asked loudly over the gunfire and rain. He simply shook his head and kept running down the trench line.

I whipped my head around to face the original direction I was running in. I kept running down that way, then off in the distance, about 10 to 15 meters in front of me, I saw Weaver. If he was close, so was Captain Davies, so I began sprinting down the trench, going around my brothers in arms and under gun fire going over head. I stumbled slightly over a branch stuck in the mud below me, but I stabilized my balance and continued running.

Off to either side of the trench, the shells kept falling down from the sky, almost in as large amounts as the rain already pouring down into the trench. The mud below only got dirtier and stickier, newer puddles forming in the mud below my feet. Boots splashed in the mud as the soldiers ran, in panic, concentration, or both. My breathing increased heavily, stressed by the shells raining down from around us.
I slowed my running pace once I got within 2 meters of Weaver, turning to face out across No Man's Land, listening to the squad's chatter behind me. "Alright, we've got everyone Captain," Sheppard spoke, his Scottish accent being more prevalent in his voice than anything else.

"Alright, all of you, up onto the crates, defend the trench!" Captain Davies ordered, "We make a stand here and hold the Germans back once again and hold the line of Verdun again!"
I stepped onto the crates alongside my comrades and began firing my rifle out into No Man's Land seemingly at random. "Shell!" Weaver yelled.

A bright burst of light and sparks manifested in front of me, about 3 meters away, then everything went to black.