Being besieged, Stefan thought, was the best time he’d ever had in the army.

In the fortress by Macraw Lake, surrounded on all sides by three-hundred thousand slavs, Stefan got to sleep in a bunk instead of in a sleeping bag. There were no fourteen hour marches in the rain. There were no working parties. There was an actual bathroom with a toilet, which both excused him from digging a latrine, and let him masturbate with some privacy.

Artillery rained from the sky on a regular basis, but it could do that in the field as well. At least in the fortress there were twelve feet of reinforced concrete between him and the shells. Other men lay awake at night, but he had the power to ignore the muffled thumps, and let them lull him to sleep.

Better yet, the fortress was well provisioned. There was even an entire room that contained nothing but thousands of chickens. In the field they got jerky and hardtack for three meals a day. In the fortress there were eggs in the morning and stew in the evening.

That stew was the highlight of Stefan’s day. His mornings were a vague blur of fortress maintenance and Lance Corporal Muller’s furious bellowing. His afternoons he spent cramped in a tiny turret through which he could barely have seen the enemy if he was inclined to try, and he was not inclined to try. The late evenings he spent cleaning and maintaining his equipment, although he personally did not see why a rifle that had never been fired needed to be cleaned every day.

The early evenings though, those were a magical time. That was when twenty-thousand infantry, Stefan among them, filed into the fortress mess by battalion. Each was given a bowl of meaty stew and a heel of bread and a full half-hour when none of the officers wanted them to do anything.

Until one evening, that changed.

Stefan filed into the mess. He was given a tray; he was given a bowl. The bowl was filled high with stew. He was given an exceptionally large piece of bread. And just as he was about to leave the line and find his table, a cup was placed on his tray.

He stared at it until someone behind him yelled: “Move, you fucking idiot!” That jolted him out of his place, and he hurried to the tables. Once there, he didn’t touch the bread, but instead stared at the cup. His face was drawn and his eyes still. It was like he was looking at his own grave.

He tasted it to be sure. It was a half-cup of schnapps.

“Oh I’m sorry, Princess, is the flavor of the wine not to your liking?” Muller and Fuchs took their usual seats opposite and beside him. They were the other two members of his heavy weapons team.

Quickly, Stefan downed a full sip of his schnapps, and grabbed his bread with his off-hand before anyone could steal it. “I think we’re going over the wall tonight.”

“Yeah.” Fuchs nodded. “Because telling everyone to get ready to climb over the concrete wall and run twenty miles to the enemy, that’s the sort of thing you want to put off until the last moment.”

“Officers do that,” Stefan mumbled. “To keep things secret. Maybe they’re worried about spies.”

“Lotta spies in here.” Muller rolled his eyes before downing most of his alcohol ration in one go. He dragged his bread though the stew and tore a chunk out of it with his teeth, mouthing around it as he spoke. “You know I saw the Tsar just this morning!”

“See, this shit is why you need to read the papers they hand out.” Fuch pointed at Muller. “We’re not even fighting the Tsar anymore. He’s dead. Now we’re fighting communists.”

“Oh? Know a lot about that do you? Comrade?”

“Your girlfriend’s the real red. I hear she’s all about sharing the wealth.”

The two of them had a go at it across the table while Stefan poked at his stew. Eventually, after the fight was over and they were both laughing, he said: “I heard that Corporal Stein in B-Company was arrested for being a spy.”

“He was arrested for being a fag. He was fucking the quartermaster’s adjutant.”

“I’m just saying!” Stefan insisted, before quite knowing what it was he was saying. Digging into his soup gave him an excuse to pause while he collected his thoughts: “They only give us schnapps when something bad is about to happen. What if we are going over the wall?”

“Well, don’t worry.” Muller leaned across the table. “If we are going out tonight, I’ve got a plan. Now listen carefully, okay? If we go over the wall…” He took a deep breath. “Then you carry the fucking ammunition. Because that’s your job. It’s your only fucking job.” Muller’s mouth hardened into a line. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Eh…” Stefan strugged. Then something struck him hard under the table, and he yelped in pain. A few other soldiers from up the row looked at the three of them to see what the commotion was. “Yes! Yes. Christ! Yes. Okay.”

“Good.” Muller snapped. “Nobody gives a shit about your problems. You know that?”

Stefan didn’t answer. He finished his bread and stew in silence.

After dinner, there was time dedicated to maintaining their personal equipment. As they filed out of the mess, the walls around them shook with the impact of shells above. Grey-blue dust rained from the ceiling and speckled their dark uniforms. Stefan’s hands shook when he brushed it off.

In the barracks, Muller disassembled and cleaned the squad’s machine gun. Fuchs had a collection of entrenching tools, spotting tools, and his demolition charges. Stefan had a rifle he’d never fired across three battles. But he did have a plan.

While the trick could only be used on each officer once, he carried several broken items specifically for this purpose. He’d looted them from a dead man at the Battle of Jia Point.

“Sergeant!” he called, after spending the requisite amount of time pretending to fiddle with his rifle and pack. He held a gas-mask line up for inspection, the tear down one side obviously irreparable. “It must have snagged on a nail in the turret wall. Permission to go to the armory?”

Fuchs shot him a look of disgust, but didn’t rat him out. Sergeant Yannik let him go.

The fortress continued to shake during his long walk to the armory. The louder the sound grew the faster his steps, until what started as a slow shuffle turned into a quick march. The armory was at the fortress’s north wing, and as he moved out of the south wing, he heard a terrible sound.

A machine gun was firing in one of the turrets. Rifles too, he could hear them. The garrison, not the just artillery, was contributing to the battle. The enemy was within sight of the fortress.

---

Stefan had been present for three battles. It would be an exaggeration to say he fought in them.

At the Battle of Koibutz he never once saw the enemy or even had any definitive proof they existed. His squad constructed a machine gun nest to defend a pass the enemy never attempted to pass through. They listened to distant gunfire for three days, and on the fourth day, were told to pack their weapon.

At the Second Battle of Zubrowka, he never saw the enemy, but that was only because it’s hard to see anything without lifting one's head. Muller fired off six belts of ammunition at the slavic horde, and Fuchs even fired his pistol twice. But their position was not overrun, and Stefan never lifted his head above the sandbags.

At the Battle of Jia Point, the enemy saw him.

They were with two other machine gun teams and a squad of general infantry, entrenched at one end of a long open field. Their orders were, “advance one kilometer along left creek bank or until you meet resistance, then entrench and hold.” They followed the creek for eight-hundred meters, and then came to the south end of the field.

They could have traveled further, but there was no cover across the entire field, not even a stone wall. Second-Lieutenant Sommer decided that entrenching in the field would leave them too exposed, and so they set up in a copse of trees at the south end.

It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining, the air was warm but not hot, and the field of grass swayed in front of them in a gentle wind. As was tradition on the eve of a battle, they’d all gotten a half-cup of schnapps that morning and were pleasantly buzzed. Stefan thought it was a good tradition, though he’d heard Company B each got a full liter of wine to last the day. Everyone said their quartermaster was better.

The earth was soft, and digging their trench didn't’ even take the entire morning. Sandbags full of earth made a quick machine gun nest, and Stefan settled down with Muller and Fuchs to wait for the enemy's arrival.

In truth, he didn’t pay much attention. The rolling fields of grass reminded him of his family farm, which in turn reminded him of Julia, the young woman from up the road. When they’d both been small children, she was nice and told good stories and he liked her. When they got older she continued to be nice and tell good stories, and he continued to like her, with the added bonus of freckles and large breasts.

As the afternoon passed, he wondered if she might still be single when he got home from the war.

In the distance, something sparkled in the sunlight. Stefan wondered if it was a lake, or perhaps a cottage somewhere in the woods. He pulled out the little pair of binoculars the army gave him, and peered into the light. The sparkle was coming from the bushes across the field from them. He looked closer.

The next thing he knew, he was lying face down in the dirt and he could taste blood. His ears rang and his head throbbed. The machine gun was firing.

The world seemed far away. With some effort, he managed to roll over. Bullets were biting into the sandbags. Another machine gun was shooting back. In the corner of his vision, he saw his helmet lying in the dirt. A large gouge had been torn out of the left side.

So he did the only thing he could do. The only thing any reasonable person could do in such a situation. He screamed and ran, bailing out of the machine gun nest and back into the trench line behind it.

Would any sane person stay in a hole in the ground while multiple people were trying to kill him? Is it a normal human reaction to shrug and carry on in the face of certain death? Stefan didn’t think so. His father had said he was afflicted with cowardice, but he didn’t think of himself as afflicted at all. He was, to his mind, the only sane one there.

He ran into Lieutenant Sommer on his way out, quite literally. The two crashed together, and Sommer threw Stefan back. Sommer started by shouting, “Get back to your post!” But Stefan tried to explain, and things escalated.

“Return to your post or you’ll be shot!”

Stefan found himself staring at the barrel of an officer’s revolver. He slowly backed away, moving up the trench and towards the machine gun nest. He crawled inside it, and curled up on top of a bed of hot shell casings.

Behind him, a mortar shell tumbled from the air and down into the trench. Sommer never had the chance to report him.

Muller and Fuchs though, didn’t wait for the proper military judicial process. Once the battle was over, they took him behind the copse of trees, gagged him with the machine gun’s cleaning rag, and beat him until he couldn’t stand.

---

Stefan broke into a run. He sprinted across the fortress, dashing through the concrete halls and under steel overhangs. The clatter of machine gun fire from the battlements intensified, and with it came the thump of infantry mortars along with the big guns

His course brought him to one of the fortress’s galleries, filled with riflemen looking out through their little concrete gunslits. A few of them were firing intermittently, though most held their weapons in reserve. One lay sprawled out on the ground, a medic holding a bloody red cloth to his face.

It took Stefan a moment to work up the urge to duck his head low and sprint through the gallery, his helmet never rising within three feet of the gunslits.

There was a line for the armory, nearly all of it men like him—ammo bearers strapped down with a half-dozen packs and loop for belts. There was no fiddling with the usual paperwork. The man at the head of the line ran to the counter and shouted, “Ten belts for an eight/fifteen!” He got them. The next man shouted, “A crate of grenades!” He got that. “Gallery ten needs five-hundred mauser clips!” They came on a push-cart.

“What do you need?” Someone asked. Stefan didn’t realize he was being called until they raised their voice: “Ammo-bearer! Yes, you!” One of the men behind the armory counter was pointing at him. “What do you need!?”

Stefan froze. He’d come to the armory to see what was being requested, in the hope he could tell from the line if an attack over the fortress walls was being planned for that night. It seemed silly now.

“Soldier!”

“Ammo-bearer,” he stammered. “MG-08.”

So they gave him ten ammo belts and sent him on his way. He stumbled and staggered back through the fortress, ducking low through the same gallery he’d run through before. The wounded man had been replaced, a pool of blood the only sign he’d ever been there.

When he made it back to the barracks, everyone was up and alert. Muller gave him a confused look when he showed up with additional ammo belts, and asked what he was doing. Fuchs looked angry, and expressed his feelings more succinctly by handing Stefan the fifteen belts they already had. The weight bent his knees until he could barely stand, but didn’t dare put them down. The officers would notice.

“The enemy is going to assault the fortress—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fuchs whispered, sneering like he’d eaten something spoiled.

“Alright, listen up!” Second-Lieutenant Schulze called. He was Sommer’s replacement. “We’re going to be drawing lots!”

---

“So I want you all to reach into this hat!”

Stefan’s unit had not arrived in time to fight in the First Battle of Sarthe. But there would soon be a second one, and his unit was close to the front lines. The forests around them seemed idyllic, and the shade was wonderful in the summer heat, but the tree trunks were scored by bullet holes and barbed wire had taken the deer.

Schulze shook his hat, and metal jangled inside. “The hat is full of shell casings. They are nearly all brass. But if you draw a steel casing you are it! Stick your hand it, grab one, and pull it out. No feeling around.”

“What are we drawing for, sir?” one of the men called.

“I need a work party to go behind the lines for the next week to help clear blocked roads. We were supposed to get an engineering company to do it, but they’re late to the party and we don’t have the time. So draw. Come on now.”

He offered the hat to Stefan, but Stefan spoke first: “I volunteer, sir!”

Schulze paused for a half a moment. Then he nodded, and clapped Stefan on the shoulder. “Good man,” he said, emphasizing the words with an affirmative nod.

That was when Stefan knew he’d made a mistake.

Four other men were chosen. All enlisted. Their names were Bohm, Winter, Thomas, and Voigt. Schulze took the five of them behind the lines and put them under the command of a corporal they didn’t know. That corporal lead them on a long walk through the woods. When they first arrived in the area it had been via dirt trails, but he lead them to the main road.

It was paved. The road signs were in French. In the distance, a steel bridge crossed over the river. Artillery had struck the road and bridge many times, but both remained substantially intact. There were craters, but they were traversable with a truck or a good horse.

An unexploded shell jutted from the asphalt, not a hundred feet from where they had emerged. More were littered by the roadside.

He talked them through the procedure for removing unexploded shells. He showed them the tools they’d be using. He explained how minimum safe distances worked, so that if one of them made a mistake, at least it wouldn’t cost anyone else their lives.

Then he said, “Stick out your ration cups.”

He had a bottle of gin in his bag. Each of them got a half-cup and a handshake.

On the first day, Winter made a mistake. The largest piece they found of him was a toe.

---

Muller reached into Schulze’s hat and pulled out a brass shell.

Fuchs reached into Schulze’s hat and pulled out a bass shell.

Stefan reached into Schulze’s hat. He froze. He tensed. He could feel his skin crawl as he broke out in a sweat. He grasped one of the shells with a jerky motion, pulling back so quickly one would think he had been burned.

It was brass. He heaved a sigh of relief, and a smile appeared on his face.

Then Schulze took the brass shell from him, and pressed a steel shell down into Stefan’s palm. “Take your rifle and report to Station 23 in the inner courtyard.”

“But…” Stefan stammered. He stared at the steel shell in his hands, unable to meet Schulze’s eyes. “Sir… I…”

“So help me, soldier,” Schulze snapped, “you will fire your weapon at least once before the end of this war. Report to Station 23.”

Stefan’s breath came in short motions. He kneeled down to grab the last of the belts, struggling to move under the weight of nearly a hundred pounds of ammunition.

“Almighty Christ in Heaven, soldier.” Schulze sighed. “I said report with your rifle. You won’t be operating a machine gun. Dump the extra gear.”

Still at attention, the entire company watched him remove his ammo belts one at a time and lay them on the floor. He picked up his rifle, and with a quick and rigid step, left the barracks.

At Station 23, he found four other soldiers also waiting, each from different units. The other four sat with grim faces. Stefan sat in a cold sweat.

He decided didn’t like the fortress after all. If he’d been in the field, he could have run for his life. He knew that the army shot deserters, but maybe they wouldn’t catch him.

A Captain entered the room, and they all stood, but he told them to wait. They would not begin until after the enemy artillery fire stopped. But the Captain did not think that would take long; it was only a probing attack.

The gunfire petered out over the next hour. The artillery ceased twenty minutes after that. The Captain pulled told them all to stand up and present their weapons for inspection. He examined each rifle briefly, and was satisfied by what he saw.

“Very well,” he said, “I understand you’ve all already had an alcohol ration for the evening. But if anyone wants another drink or a smoke, I won’t stop you.”

He offered the first man a flask and a packet of cigarettes from inside his jacket pocket. The man took a drink and a cigarette, then passed them to the next man who did the same. Stefan was last.

“I don’t understand, sir,” he said, when the flask finally came to him. He held it with two fingers, like it was a dead thing. “Why did everyone get a drink if we’re the only ones going over the wall?”

“Mmm?” The Captain frowned. “Who told you you were going over the wall?”

“But… but we are…” Stefan froze. He jaw worked silently. “Why was an alcohol ration issued today? Sir?”

“To raise morale.” The Captain snorted. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard. Corporal Stein in Third Battalion, B-Company was a traitor. He’s a damn red.”

“Then…” He still didn’t understand. “What are we doing here!?”

“You CO didn’t tell you? You’re the firing squad.”