A day in the life of The Second World War

I sat at my outpost, my machine gun in front of me at the ready. I tensed myself, keeping a watchful eye on any signs that an enemy was approaching. The arctic chill numbed my entire body, as I drew my coat tighter over myself. The cold was not going to stop me from spotting enemies – even though enemies had not appeared here, in the Ardennes Mountains region of Wallonia in Belgium.

Then, a distant rumble was heard, increasing in volume steadily. I woke my companion up, speaking into the radio harshly for reinforcements – it sounded as though a large number of enemy troops were heading here. As we looked out at the vast forest, gunshots suddenly rang out in great bursts. Instinctively, we ducked, but my companion was unlucky – a bullet had caught his shoulder and life was slowly leaking from him. As the gunshots became more frequent and much louder, I continued shouting into my radio for reinforcements, ignoring that we would be more easier to locate that way – we were almost certainly dead anyway if reinforcements did not arrive soon. Then, the enemy’s bullets stopped flying past our outpost, but were instead aimed at a huge cloud of smoke and snow – our reinforcements had arrived.

Our soldiers crawled behind their jeeps, returning fire at every opportunity, many falling under the constant, heavy fire of the enemy. The cascade of enemy bullets fell like rain, thudding into barriers and soldiers alike, many of them crumbling under the downpour like earth melting into soil. My companion and I did the same, firing in the general direction of the enemy at every moment they were not firing at us. Perhaps, the first bullet slowed his movements down, or perhaps, the cold numbed his movements, but my companion was hit again – this time just above the heart. He slumped down in the outpost, clutching at his injuries, having sudden coughing bursts of blood.

Spotting a nearby medic, I called out to him, and he quickly crept over. Examining my companion, it was decided that there was no other way but to send him back to the hospital as quickly as possible. We instructed the other soldiers to cover for us, and they began firing more frequently and valiantly. A grenade flew to the outpost as the medic and I dragged my companion away and towards the cover of the jeeps. It exploded, its fragments jarring into my thigh, but gritting my teeth, I held on. The world was silent – figures blurred together for one hazy moment, with the overpowering stench of blood masking everything else. Then, the shell-shock was over and the medic assisted me in dragging my companion over to the nearest jeep – thankfully without much further incidents, and we sped away to the hospital, already crowded with many injured soldiers. The Battle of the Bulge had only just begun.