October 1918
I close the notebook. The pencil trembles slightly in my grip, not from fear, but from exhaustion. How long has it been since I've slept? A day? Two? It doesn't matter. None of it matters anymore.
The war is over.
Not officially, not yet. The generals in Berlin still send orders, still talk of last stands and counteroffensives.
But I have seen the truth. I see it in the hollow eyes of the men around me, in the way their fingers shake on their rifles. The empire is bleeding out, and we are simply here to witness its final breath.
The first shell screams overhead.
Mud explodes in a violent spray, drenching us in filth.
I shove the notebook into my coat and grab my rifle, my body moving before my mind catches up. Someone is shouting. Commands? Prayers? Begging? It all blurs together beneath the thunder of artillery.
Then the whistling stops.
For a moment, there is silence. A heavy, unnatural quiet, as if the world itself is holding its breath.
Then the enemy is upon us.
Figures pour over the trench line—shadows in the dark, rifles raised, bayonets gleaming. A man to my left fumbles with his weapon, too slow, too weak. A bayonet finds his throat, and his scream gurgles into silence.
I do not hesitate.
The first enemy soldier is young, just like me. His uniform too clean, his eyes too wide. He thrusts his bayonet toward me, but he hesitates. I do not.
My rifle finds his gut. A pull of the trigger, and his body folds inward, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.
Another comes. This one does not hesitate, and neither do I.
The trench is chaos. Bodies twist and fall, screams lost beneath the roar of gunfire. Blood splashes against my face, warm even in the bitter cold. I move without thinking, without feeling, cutting through flesh and cloth as if they were the same.
I do not know how long the fighting lasts. Minutes? Hours? Time does not exist here. But eventually, the gunfire fades. The screams die. The enemy is gone, retreated or dead.
I stand in the center of the carnage, chest heaving, rifle heavy in my grip. Around me, the trench is littered with corpses, the mud slick with blood. My uniform is torn, my hands stained red, but I am alive.
That is all that matters.
For now.
I wipe the blood from my face and retrieve my notebook, flipping it open with steady hands. The pencil touches the page once more.
"When the war ends, the weak will search for someone to blame. The strong will search for an opportunity."
I slump against the trench wall, rifle resting across my lap. My hands are steady, my breath even.
Seventeen years old.
Most would call that too young to be a soldier. But war does not care for age, nor do the men who sent me here.
They needed bodies to hold the line, and I was just another name on a recruitment list, another uniform to fill the ranks.
My father had been the same. A soldier of the empire, a man of discipline and cold efficiency. He beat respect into us with his fists, taught us that pain was a lesson, that obedience was survival.
He called me weak when I flinched, soft when I hesitated. And when war came, he was the first to march off with pride in his eyes.
He died six months later. A bullet to the chest, buried in a shallow grave somewhere in France.
I felt nothing when they told me. No grief. No sadness. Only the knowledge that I would follow the same path, sent to die in a war that was already lost.
But I will not die here.
The others in my unit cling to memories of home, of family, of a time before all this. They whisper about returning to their mothers, to their sweethearts, to the lives they left behind.
Fools.
There is no home to return to. Even if they survive, they will find only ruin.
But I have no home, no sweetheart, no warmth waiting for me.
And I prefer it that way.
I have no illusions of heroism, no dreams of glory. I am not fighting for my country, nor for honor. I am fighting because war is all there is. Because violence is simple, and power is the only thing that matters.
The weak die. The strong survive.
And I will survive.
A cold wind sweeps through the trench, rustling the pages of my notebook. I close it and stand, stepping over the bodies of the fallen. I begin collecting their dog tags. It had become a routine for me long ago, and the others had started doing the same.
"Otto, there are talks about the war ending," a soldier comes up to me and says. "We might go home soon!" he almost shouts.
"Maybe," I mutter. "But Heinrich, don't get your hopes too high," I say to him while turning a dead soldier around. "It isn't the first time they're talking about peace."
He smirks, his middle-aged face adorned with a mud-drenched mustache. "Of course, of course, but it really seems like they're taking it seriously now. Well, it's about time those fat pigs realize we have no chance."
I chuckle. Heinrich is one of the few people I could call a friend, even though he is about twenty years older than me. In times like this, age doesn't matter much.
"You two! Go back to your positions," a man shouts at us.
We salute and return to our usual guarding posts, settling back into our routine