I awoke in the ruin of our trench, half swallowed by the muck and littered with bodies of comrade and enemy alike. With a heavy heart I turned away from the broken and bloodied bodies of Otto, Paul, and poor young Alfons. I seemed to be the sole survivor of our counter-attack. I collected a rifle and ammunition for myself, and noticed the peculiar silence of the front. There was not even the expected distant rumble of guns somewhere else along the line. I wondered how long I had been unconscious that the battle should have shifted so far. Rot had not yet ruined the faces of the dead. The overcast of grey, with the occasional plume of black smoke drifting above gave no clue. If there were planes, I did not see them. I debated briefly if I should shelter in place or try to reconnect with our lines. Resolved to take my chances heading east than dying here by Canadian bayonets, I scavenged a compass and binoculars from the corpse of a lieutenant and climbed out of the trench, my boots sinking into the mud. Landmarks were few on the shell-shattered landscape, as I trudged past destroyed defenses, abandoned hulks of tanks and gun emplacements.

I trekked for what felt like a thousand leagues, wary as I passed constant signs of recent combat. Cresting a hill, I came to snaking fortifications made mostly of sandbags in a style that seemed unlike our own. Bodies in unfamiliar green uniforms clutching strange rifles littered these trenches. Before I had time to think about this, my ears pricked at the first voice I had heard in what seemed an eternity. Unable to make out the words, I followed the sound into a dugout, retching at the heap of dead men scattered about. But amid the carnage, there was something resembling our field radios, but much smaller, able to fit in my hand. The voice over the radio spoke calmly, as if it were reading a newspaper written about fantastic, terrible things, of war, death, and devastation. It seemed to contradict itself. "...today,