Rise

November 24, 1917.

The gunfire never held up, it continued raining against the Germans for hours. How many hours, I couldn't tell you. We still haven't received the order to charge over the trench, it's midday, something has to be wrong. I walked casually towards the command bunker to get some answers.

"Captain Davies, why haven't we charged, we've been suppressing them for hours, and they haven't returned fire for about an hour now."

"We didn't charge before because there was heavy fire being returned to us, so sending anybody out would have been a death wish, we're suspecting that right now they're gathering all their men to charge, but at one position in the trench, the problem is, we don't know where."

They were playing mind games with us, a battle of wits, or a guessing game at this point. We could only decide the victor based off who made the move to charge first. It didn't seem like either side was willing to, all there was to do now for myself was wait around until orders arrived.

I went to an MG nest, close to it, and peeked over the trench to see if there were any Germans in the trench. I couldn't find any of the gray helmets the Germans sported, nor any hands grasping the handles of the machine guns. From this far of a distance, I assumed the trench had been entirely cleared out, no one was left inside. After watching the trench for a moment, studying it intently, I saw a figure rush out the exit of the trench off to the right side of my view. He sprinted with a way of importance, no way in hell was he deserting.

Further towards the right of the trench, there was a hill, which I ran to and moved to the top of, watching to see the man that had run away.
I found him, out in an open field running towards a village. It looked like there were maybe a few dozen other soldiers already positioned at the village, readying defenses. I turned tail and began running toward the command bunker again.

"They've evacuated the trench and are taking defensive positions at the village nearby."

"How can you be so sure, the only vantage point we have of viewing into their trench is on the hill and there's no defenses up there, so you'd immediately die."

"I went up on that hill, one man ran out of the trench, there aren't any soldiers left in the trench, how many machine gun nests were there?"

"Fifteen, why?"

"Only ten machine guns were present in the trench."

A moment of pause and epiphany filled the air. I looked into Captain Davies' eyes, the cogs turning in his head and his eyes widening with a slight fear. The reason for the fear was simple, if five of the guns were missing, and a village anywhere out here needed only two or three guns to defend, the others could be used to storm the trench and cause even more damage to us on top of the flamethrowers.

"Start preparing that hill with defenses, get as many people as you can to help you, we need to be ready, make sure it's a small group, we need to continue the gunfire in small increments, they can't be aware that we know."

I nodded obediently and promptly left, first finding my squad mates and we immediately began working. We carried sandbags up the hillside and placed them on top, setting up makeshift machine gun nests on the bags. Belt feeds were placed on the guns, and rushed sniper dugouts were created. We finished setting up the hill after about forty-five minutes, prompting me to return to Captain Davies.

"We've finished setting up the defenses, sir, what now?"

"Prepare for a charge. We'll charge the village then promptly retreat, we meet them at the hill and wipe them out. Go to the armory, I want you and Paul to join the flame trooper forces."

I looked to Paul who gave a reluctant affirmative. We left the bunker and made our way towards the armory. I had no idea how to use the flamethrower, so I just had to hope the flame troopers would be of assistance to me. I equipped the flame tanks and held the thrower, walking out to meet the other troopers.