The snow fell softly onto the hillside, coating the trees and the ground. It filled the holes left by the shells, turning the ground once more into clean, pure whiteness. The fallen trees and the groups of logs slowly turned into featureless lumps in the ground. From some of those lumps, small amounts of smoke emerged from holes in the snow.
A man in white clothes emerged from one of the lumps, a rifle in his hand. He kicked the snow off the entrance to his foxhole as he emerged, revealing the warm hole in the ground that was occupied by three other men. He closed the entrance, and brought the butt of the rifle to his shoulder.
Crouching, he moved from lump to lump, looking inside each one and speaking with the occupants. Nothing new had happened. Men in their holes passed cigarettes to each other, and kept warm by the small fires in their holes. If something was happening they’d hear the perimeter post before anything got to their holes.
The man cursed the cold as he trudged through the snow towards the perimeter post. This was the coldest day so far. Fortunately the snow wasn’t so bad today. You could see, at least. A few days ago it had been so bad you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The next day they had found a group of five dead enemy soldiers in the midst of the foxholes. They had clearly gotten lost, and wandered far beyond their own lines, where they had frozen to death.
The men on the perimeter post hadn’t seen anything. No signs of life were coming from the enemy. Maybe they had decided it was too cold for a war. Or maybe they had died from the cold, like their five friends had.
The man began to trudge back to his hole. He was thinking of his home, a house in the southern mountains, where the snow coated the sharp mountain tops in winter while the lake froze over. His children were probably skating on the ice even now. Or maybe they were in the house, listening to the crashes of falling avalanches higher in the mountains. He could almost hear the familiar sound now...
It was then he realised it wasn’t the distant crashes of mountainsides he could hear, but the thudding sound of artillery. He shouted, and began to run as fast as he could towards the nearest foxhole.
He dragged the entrance open, flinging himself inside and dragging it shut behind him just as the first shell hit the ground. It gouged a dirty hole in the clean snow as it hit the ground and exploded.
Shrapnel from the shell thudded into the wood that covered one of the foxholes, but didn’t get inside to the men that cowered from the artillery barrage. More shells exploded, some as they hit the ground, while others exploded in the air, raining shrapnel all around. One struck a foxhole directly, the shell dropping through the hole used as a chimney, and hitting the ground between a man’s legs.
The men inside the foxhole stared at the smoking projectile, dug into the ground about half a metre away from the man’s crotch. It didn’t explode. They began to laugh in relief, and one of them had the presence of mind to throw the dud shell out through the same hole it had entered by.
Huge splinters flew from the trees as shrapnel and explosions tore them apart, spinning into the air. The splinters were just as deadly as the metal shrapnel. If anyone was outside of their foxhole, they would be impaled by the sharp wooden spikes that were flying.
A screaming shell hit another foxhole, exploding on impact with the wooden roof of the hole. The wood, made of thick tree trunks, bent in but did not yield, though a large gouge was carved out of the top. The men inside gripped their rifles and prayed.
Shells continued falling, until finally the soldiers’ luck ran out. A shell hit a thinner roof of tree trunks, punching through and spreading shrapnel throughout the inside of the hole. The metal shards, combined with the splinters from the trees, ripped most of the men to shreds. One man survived, covered in the blood of his companions while he himself remained unharmed.
It took a few seconds for the horror to set in. He began to scream, looking into the lifeless eyes of his companions and the horrific damage the shrapnel had done to his friends. He didn’t bother screaming for a medic. He could tell it was too late. Instead, he screamed at the horror of it.
The barrage came to a slow halt. Only one foxhole had suffered severe damage, the rest of them had either been missed or had had thick enough roofs for the damage not to be too severe. Men waited a few minutes after the explosions had stopped before they ventured out of their holes. Men ran to the damaged foxhole, pulling out the survivor. The medic felt their throats, just to be sure. He turned to the rest of the men and shook his head.
The blood covered man was still screaming, his companions unable to stop him. The medic checked him, but he was completely unharmed. His screams turned to sobs as one of the other soldiers wrapped him in a blanket and guided him to another foxhole.
The snow was still falling, and was already beginning to cover the blasted wood of the destroyed foxhole. A soldier gazed into the horrific inside of the foxhole for a few moments, and then trudged off through the snow. He was crouching once more.
He checked on each foxhole, speaking to their occupiers. No sounds of gunfire. Maybe it had just been a barrage for the hell of it? Maybe he should check the perimeter post again. He cursed the cold again as he returned towards the perimeter post.
It was gone. It was obvious that more than one shell had hit it, killing the occupants and destroying the inside. The man dropped to the ground when he heard a noise from up ahead. His rifle was at the ready as soon as he hit the snow. He scanned the woods with the iron sights on the rifle.
He thought of his children again. He thought of taking his son hunting for the first time, further up in the mountains. It had been snowing then too. They tracked that deer for three days. On the third day, they had found it standing, staring right at them. He had raised his rifle with a slow, deliberate motion then, so as not to startle it. Two winters ago, that was. So much had happened since then.
Now, two winters later, he once again had his target in his sights. And the youth he was aiming at didn’t look too unlike his son. He hesitated for a moment, distracted by the memory. He realised the youth couldn’t see him, as the deer hadn’t realised he was there even though he had been looking right at him.
He pulled the trigger, all thoughts of his son gone from his head as the bullet left the barrel, spiralled through the air, and slammed straight into the youth’s forehead. A perfect shot.
