The Foxhole: Part 1

It was about 0900 with the sun just beginning to break up the heavy grey cloud cover that had been rolling overhead during the night. Private First Class Patricia Reinhart is talking to her best friend, PFC Emily Barnes about the care package and letters they had gotten from relatives back home. This is their first deployment after basic training, and the two girls are as fresh as fresh could be.

Patricia was 18, the daughter of an upper class merchant family from the capital. Blonde haired and blue eyed, she had the delicate facial features of a porcelain doll with long, slender legs and arms. The other recruits in boot camp called her "Princess" for her fair looks and demure personality, which embarrassed her mightily (although that reaction only caused her nickname to stick even harder).

Emily was a year younger, having lied to the recruiter about her age. She was the polar opposite of Patricia. Where Patricia was tall and graceful, Emily was short and stocky. Her hair was a curly brunette mess, her skin was tanned from years of working in the fields, and her eyes were a sharp emerald green. The daughter of a poor sharecropper family, she had run away to join the Army in search of a better life. She was rough around the edges, had a dirty sense of humor, and a no nonsense way of talking.

Despite the massive differences in their personality and upbringing, the two girls had gravitated towards each other from the first week at boot. Despite the differences they had things in common. Both had joined up to escape a strict, preordained path in life, and both respected each other's grit. The pair had quickly become sisters in arms, confidants, and simply close friends.

Patricia munched sedately on a biscuit from her breakfast ration pack as Emily wrote a letter with all the intensity of a physician operating on a patient. The blonde smiled at the sight, then shifted her attention to the tool they were tasked with operating. Ensconced in a foxhole, the two young soldiers were in charge of an Imperial Arsenal Model 1918 machine gun, a "light" recoil operated, air cooled automatic weapon that weighed about 11 lbs. Patricia grimaced as she remembered the countless failures and malfunctions she had experienced on the cursed thing back in boot camp. If the machine gun failed, the two girls had two ancient single action revolvers that had been converted from black powder about a decade before they had been born. There were six shots available before needing to laboriously push the empty casings out one by one, and shoving fresh rounds in, manually indexing the cylinder each time. It would be quicker to use their shovels as weapons than to reload, she often grumbled.

So lost in reverie was she that faint whistle almost escaped her attention. The whistle sounded again, louder this time. Patricia perked up and scrambled over to the machine gun, all drowsiness forgotten. Emily was right beside her, dragging a case of ammunition belts. Patricia unlatched the feed cover, opened it up, grabbed the proffered belt from Emily and stuffed it into the feed tray. She slammed the top cover down and yanked the charging handle back. Their ears picked up the unmistakable sound of gunfire further down the line, and soon they saw enemy soldiers running towards their position. Patricia squeezed down on the trigger, and the gun burst into action. It ripped into the charging group, cutting them down in large swathes. Patricia kept the trigger down, sweeping the land in front of her position with lead, her world vibrating as the gun recoiled, the awful din reverberating in her ears. There was a click and Patricia finally let go of the trigger.

There was nought but carnage in front of the two teenagers. Bodies were strewn everywhere. The heavy rifle rounds that the Model 1918 was chambered in had dealt gruesome wounds to the enemy, and in some parts of the kill zone, where the bullets had penetrated multiple soldiers at once, there were piles of corpses where soldiers tripping on their dead friends were cut down. Emily yelled at Patricia, saying something urgent, but the blonde was numb and deafened. Slowly, she opened the top cover and Emily shoved the fresh ammo belt in. In a daze, she closed the cover and pulled the charging handle back again. It was now 1100 hours, and the sun had chased away the morning fog.