I could hear the sounds of distant tanks approaching me. Slowly, they inched closer towards our frontline. We were in dire straits all our allied tanks had been immobilized or destroyed and we were running low on anything that had the capability to destroy the enemy tanks.
A stray shell range overhead as it narrowly missed my trench line. I was severely underequipped for the incoming enemy forces. With only basic military clothing none offering protecting from anything significant except my helmet which only helped against minor shrapnel bits.
Besides that, I was only equipped with an assault rifle, 30 rounds per magazine. Virtually useless against tanks unless you could somehow shoot the crew inside of it. Each of us got two extra magazines plus the one already in the gun.
Definitely not enough to hold off a brigade of soldiers and two dozen tanks. Thankfully the prolonged fighting in this area decimated the natural aspects of it. Leaving only dirt, later it turned into mud. Safe to say the tanks and infantry alike were having their fair share of problems advancing at a reasonable speed.
I was deployed to the frontlines about two weeks ago. Two months before that our leader announced that due to the heavy casualties sustained and virtually no progress made on the front. They would be rescinding the ban on woman taking part in the war.
Two weeks later, I got a letter in the mail, I forget exactly what it said exactly but it was something along the lines of. 'Kira Gray, we are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to be deployed to the frontlines...' Bla bla. You get the point.
So, I said my goodbyes to my parents and little brother. I tried to not get too emotional. Especially not in front of my brother. I didn't want him to see me as anything else than his 'unbreakable female sidekick' as would refer to me. Usually by screaming it as he ran down the hallway in his mock-up superhero costumes but regretfully, I let a tear slip out. Then another and another. By the end of it I had cried until I didn't have any more tears left. I think that's the only time my brother has ever seen me cry.
Despite the horrible things I had heard about the war. We had seen wars before. We had seen destruction before, and we had seen death before. It was nothing new to the world but when you start to hear about people you knew dying or getting injured or towns getting razed. Suddenly all those wars from lands far beyond seem to matter. There destruction and victories matter. Not because they suffered but because you no suffer together and if only our country had helped. Then they might help us now.
Nonetheless Feeling a strange sense of excitement and anxiety, I took the bus to where we would be trained for the next month. The horrors I had heard surely couldn't be as bad as they claimed, especially considering our short training period. I assumed we would most likely be helping at camps and such.
Boy was I wrong.
I knew the war was more serious than I had thought it was when we arrived at our training camp. Our instructor was barely a few years older than we were, and I doubt he had seen any real combat. Not to mention many of the wound were sent to the camp to get treatment or to be held until they could.
After a month, we finished training. Barely.
I had been on the frontlines for two weeks now. The attacks that happened in that time were mostly small. Probably to prod our defences or the occasional soldier that had gone mad and decided to test his metal.
In that time, I had learnt more about war and how combat works than I ever would have at training now matter how long it was. Fortunately, at training I had made no friends. So, when I came across the occasional corpse, I recognised that's all it was someone I vaguely remembered. War was nothing like training. It was far, far worse.
