Shell

Part 1: Battle at Champagne, France. Dec 21, 1914.

Champagne, France. Dec 21, 1914.

"Was zum Teufel macht er?"

Gefreiter Baur and Gefreiter Hoffman couldn't wrap their minds around what just emerged from the hazy battlefield fifty meters away. A man was strolling through the war-torn green field as black smoke and bullets raged about him. The Strolling Man seemed to be surveying the area as if he had just crash landed from the Moon and had never seen green grass before. His languid pace stood out like a sore thumb from the speed of warfare happening near him.

A shell detonated somewhere between Gefreiter Hoffman and The Strolling Man, and Hoffman thought that was the end of him, but as the dirt fell back to Earth and the smoke cleared, there he was, still strolling.

"He's just walking," Said Baur.

Hoffman replied grimly, as if this scene had a very nearing expiration date, "He's walking in the wrong direction."

He was. He strolled parallel to both of their front lines, as if headed in a third direction, fighting his own personal, slow-motion war against the English Channel far to the Northwest.

A Frenchman charged toward their trench meters away from the Strolling Man and was quickly cut down by a triplet of shots. The Strolling Man kept strolling, oblivious.

"He's ours I think!" Said Hoffman.

Then, the Strolling Man faced them.

"Mein Gott." Hoffman coughed out.

The other side of The Strolling Man's body was revealed as he walked toward them: It was almost entirely blackened, as if someone drunkenly painted the right side of his body from head to toe with charcoal. The charred and shredded edges of what was left of his uniform gave way to melted flesh that ranged from crimson to pink, depending on the area you were looking at.

And Hoffman tried not to look.

The two soldiers had seen their share of schauspiel and grusel in their four months of service in the German Imperial Army. Hoffman felt like he had lived a lifetime in the four months since Russia declared war and Germany invaded Luxembourg.

Luxembourg had been easy. A surprise march cutting straight through. At the time he had thought, If going to war was this simple they should have done it sooner.

Belgium was where the action began. Some shelling. Some shooting. Some charging. Some toasting. The Belgian POWs that Hoffman and Baur escorted to the firing lines stared agape in disbelief as they walked past Big Bertha when they saw her at the German encampment. Of course, Gefreiters Baur and Hoffman also didn't quite believe the rumours of Big Bertha's existence either until they saw it themselves. Or rather heard it first: From five kilometers away they cheered as Big Birtha launched eight-hundred kilogram shells miles into the sky that plunged through forty centimeter concrete forts. Forts that the Belgians had bragged about being impenetrable just last spring.

After Belgium things took a turn.

They had been told by high command that the Belgians wouldn't destroy the railroads, and if they could just take the railroads it would be easy to get around. But they did. And it wasn't.

They had been told that the British wouldn't go to war for the French, and that their alliance was barely a slip of paper. But they did. And it wasn't.

They had been told that Russia would be late to mobilize to the Eastern Front. And, true to their luck, they weren't.