Humanity is mad! It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre. What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible! Men are mad!
- French Second Lieutenant Alfred Joubaire, Battle of Verdun
He was killed shortly after by an artillery shell.
Distant artillery rumbled, deadly murmurings raising slight tremors in the ground; the wind carried the sound of muffled gunfire, little pops from the south, and a reconissance plane droned overhead.
It was quiet, blessedly quiet.
No nearby cracks of rifles, no chattering machine guns, no hissing bullets. The stretch of trenches in this sector of the Western Front was, for war, silent. If one strained, however, they could hear the clatter of equipment on soldiers from the British trenches; a mass of men moving about. Perhaps reinforcing depleted units, perhaps getting ready for a charge at daybreak.
At least one man in the German trenches was straining for those vague noises. Musketier Edwikke Schuett lay prone in the mud, peering over the edge of a large shell crater. It was faintly lucky; the shell had blown up next to his trench, letting him quickly slip into the crater and lie down. Sentry duty was normally done standing up for hours on end, trying not to get shot by a sniper, so lying down and blending in with the chewed-up crater edge was a small mercy.
Schuett's Mauser rifle lay beside him, within easy reach; he was clad in a heavy grey overcoat, blending in well with waning light. A metal stalhelm covered his head, messily coated in mud to prevent glinting in the setting sun. The man was gaunt and dirty, caked with mud; his hands, raised to shield his eyes from the sun hanging low in the West, trembled slightly. Whether it was from sickness or exhaustion, he didn't know, but certainly not from fear. It wasn't bad enough for fear, not yet.
Behind him her heard tense conversations, the terse whispers of a group of men ready to crawl into no-man's land and place fresh barbed wire under the coming darkness. Schuett ignored them and kept his gaze ahead, staring into the wasted vista that perhaps had once been some lovely French countryside. Skeletons of trees, mud in place of grass. The same sight as yesterday, the last week, month, year. Well, that wasn't completely accurate, but the grey mud and smoke-choked sky was all he could remember.
He was perfectly still, watching for movement in no-man's land that didn't come, listening to the clattering of Tommies that didn't show themselves. The trees, if you could still call the charred things sticking out of the mud that, did not sway in the wind. Artillery fired in the north, not that he could see the flashes yet. The gunfire to the south had tapered off, and the plane overhead and moved on until it was a faint drone above the clouds, out of sight. The conversation behind him quieted, men moving off to their places, waiting for nightfall. Nothing stirred.
Gott, this was desolation. Schuett felt like the only living thing in all the world in that moment, isolation supreme. No voices, no life in this landscape, this hell, just the faint noises of man's tools.
Was he even a man, anymore? Were any of them men anymore? He felt doubt, felt more akin to the guns or planes or bayonets than his family at home. A tool, a weapon, a number on a piece of paper, a machine sent out to kill and die.
Slowly, he reached under his overcoat and grasped the cross pinned to his shirt, feeling the chipped iron with calloused hands. Glory to the Kaiser, he thought. Surely he was more than a machine, better than the rifle beside him. A machine is only made to fight, does not choose to go to war, but is mindlessly sent there by men. He was here for the Fatherland, for the Kaiser. Surely, he and all his fellows, all the men on the Front, surely we are better. We must be. He couldn't go on if he was no more than another tool of war in man's long history of violence.
He sighed, his voice hoarse through cracked lips and a parched throat. He was a man, gaunt, ragged, but alive. Even the ground wilts and the stones crack at this hell, dogs flee in the night and horses whinny in stark terror when they hear the guns. Only men endure.
His thoughts were interrupted by movement, something out of place in the corner of his vision. Twisting his head, his gaze settled on a big shell crater scarcely fifteen meters away. He flinched in surprise, and a fear; had the British somehow gotten this close? A tunnel, perhaps?
He grabbed his rifle and aimed it at the crater, watching with an unblinking gaze. The movement was not a man, certainly. It was more a shimmer, the air warping and convulsing over the hole. He broke into cold sweat; was he about to be the first victim of some secret enemy weapon? Was it a distraction of some sort, trying to get him to break cover and die by sniper?
He swallowed as the shimmering grew, and jerked back in surprise when the nearby crater erupted into a briliiant flash. He waited for the deafening sound of the explosion, for the blast from the shell to hurl him back, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, much to his confusion, the light lingered on for a few seconds, then dissapaited enough for him to see something tumble out and into the crater.
As suddenly as it came, the light blinked out of existence with a little pop. For a man accostomed to shelling, the whole event had been incomprehensibly quiet. Had he imagined that? Had the trenches finally broke him?
Apparently not. "Was zur Hölle ist das?" a man called from the trench behind, obviously as confused as Schuett was.
"Ich weiß nicht-" Schuett replied, only to be cut off by something that sent a chill over him. A scream, no, a shriek, came from the crater. It was loud, earsplittingly so, but the most unsettling part was that it was unmistakably female.
It tapered off after a few seconds, and once again the Front was quiet.
"Was der Teufel?" the man from before said, louder this time. All behind him, he could hear the whispers and mutterings of the wire-layers, utterly perplexed and a little frightened.
For his part, Schuett realized he could hear heavy, panicked breathing from the crater, quiet but distinct. After a moment, that too stopped. Then, somehing nearly stopped his heart cold. A head peered over the crater, the splash of colour that was its hair hurting his eyes. More than anything thus far, he shrank back from this new event, his rifle shaking as it pointed at the thing. It wasn't a man, but those widening eyes sure looked like it was surprised.
Before he could fully comprehend the head, it disappeared, ducking under the edge of the crater. Schuett blinked. He'd never seen anything like that.
As the German lay in the mud, his heart rate slowly settling down, he felt the twitch of an emotion he'd been without for a very long time. Curiosity, actual curiosity! It stirred in his chest, piercing the hardened gloom of his mind. That thing, that head, had simply been so unlike the world around it. He couldn't place the logic behind that, but it was so out of place, and coming out of flashing light like that . . .
Throwing caution to the wind, a surprising act for a man well-versed with the consequences of exposing oneself on the Front, he reached under his overcoat and pulled out a bayonet, fixing to his rifle.
"Ich überprüfe es aus! he said to his comrades, then shakily got to his feet and started for the crater. Squelching through mud up to his boots, and tingling with surging adrenaline, he covered the fifteen meters quickly. Dimly, he noticed no British fire to greet his sudden appearance. Perhaps this really was a secret weapon, and they were letting him test it out for them. Maybe they had as little clue as to what had happened as he did, and were letting the German be the victim in case it was bad.
Or, maybe the sniper had fallen asleep or something. He liked that idea the most.
He reached the edge of the crater safely, but before he could dive in, made the mistake of glancing inside first. He skidded to a halt, wide-eyed at the creature that lay there. A horse, perfectly white coat marred by blood trickling from a
"Hello." someone said in English, as the horse's mouth moved. Schuett blinked, staring at the horse, his mind putting two and two together but refusing to accept the answer. His riffle came back up, bayonet almost touching its skin.
"You are a member of the warrior race?" Celestia asked.
"Warrior race?" Schuett shook his head. "I am a soldier. Nothing more. I'm not from a militaristic family or anything."
"Oh?" Celestia tilted her head.
"I am the son of a merchant, was a student. I joined the Army when war first broke out, and here I am."
Celestia seemed taken aback by this. "That's a great difference between us, then. The pegasi are our warriors, proud and daring. Their flying gives them a considerable advantage. The griffons share that trait, although with scarcely half the skill."
Schuett opened his mouth immediately, then paused with a thoughtful expression on his face. "Well, we Germans can fly too." he said finally with a hint of pride. "Boelcke pioneered the use of the machine-gun in the air. The lives of those in the Imperial Air Service certainly seems more glorious than the ones of us poor infantrymen."
"Oh, so Germans do fly. A different race of Germans, then? Do the British have fliers?"
Schuett stared at Celestia blankly for a moment. "No . . . we fly in planes. Machines. Those pilots are just like me physically, just with different training."
"You're saying you fly with machines?" Celestia asked, doubt slipping into her voice. "How does that work?"
"I don't really know," Schuett admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Some of my former classmates were obsessed with the new vehicles, they'd have been happy to explain the specifics. Me, I just see them going about above my head. I envy them sometimes, wallowing in the mud as they soar through blue sky."
Celestia nodded. "The Earth pony levies surely envy the pegasi at times."
"Earth ponies." Schuett began, then said no more of the matter. "You world sounds fantastic. Tell me, i believe you mentioned griffons at one point?"
He gulped when Celestia darkened, eyes narrowed, but not at him.
