Even after an artillery barrage from the German side, the drumlike constructions continue advancing without faltering in the slightest. They move slower than infantrymen, but the British troops following behind somehow seem more confident than normal. From the way the giant drums move, it seems they’re some new type of vehicle—a kind of moving metal box with the front fully enclosed. I don’t have a clue what’s inside.
When the British Army reaches the sea of barbed wire, every soldier in the German Army lets out the same terrible cry. The metal boxes begin to roll over the wire, crushing it easily as they effortlessly make their way across no-man’s-land. Posts topple, and barbed wire is buried in the mud beneath the metal boxes, creating a safe path for the trailing British soldiers. Now with an avenue of attack, the enemy troops begin to rush toward our position.
“They broke through!” someone screams. “They got past the barbed wire like it was nothing!”
The metal boxes advance over muddy ground that would sink normal vehicles or carts. From my vantage point, I can’t tell what sort of machine this is they’re using.
The German officers raise the cry to attack, but not a single one of the young soldiers leaps out of the trenches. They stare as if transfixed by the metal boxes, trembling with their rifles in their hands. Melee combat is terrifying enough in normal situations, so it’s only natural that anyone would resist an order to engage one of those things. Soldiers sit hunched over like baby birds, while their sergeants go around kicking them and trying to spur them to action with cries of “What are you doing?!” “Hurry up and go!” and “Anyone who doesn’t charge will be shot! Now move!”
I don’t want to be kicked, so I run out of the trench on my own. I don’t care how intimidating those metal boxes are; I’m not about to let the British into our territory. There’s nothing more difficult or more horrible than hand-to-hand combat inside the trenches.
I immediately drop to the ground to avoid sniper fire, turning my head to yell behind me. “I’ll take the lead. Fritz, Hendrich, cover me.”
“On it!” Fritz yells, running toward a heavy machine gun, while Hendrich acknowledges with “Understood” as he picks up his rifle and takes position behind a bulletproof shield.
I wave my arm time and again, urging the others forward, before one young soldier finally musters up his courage and creeps out of the trenches. That seems to cause the others to relax a bit and, one by one, they soon emerge from behind the sandbags.
I lead the charge, the left side of my face twitching like crazy. It serves as a constant reminder of how intently my body rejects war, even as the adrenaline courses through me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I admonish myself, asking why I ran out here rather than staying in a shivering ball in the trenches. At times like this, I have to tell that part of me to shut up. That staying still would have driven me mad, so the best thing to do was turn off my brain and fight.
Exchanging fire with the British soldiers racing toward us, my small group of soldiers approaches one of the metal boxes. Up close, it’s shaped like a parallelogram and much wider than I imagined, with large rivets covering its entire body. Sizewise, it’s slightly taller than a grown man and probably a little over twenty-five feet long. A row of interconnected metal plates rotate from the front to the back down both sides of the metal box, and these beltlike structures are wrapped around the outside of the wheels. The whole thing probably doesn’t sink into the mud because these continually keep it moving.
Two large wheels are fixed to the back of the parallelogram, making the whole thing look like a giant fish—a metal fish swimming across a sea of mud. It emits the same coarse engine sounds as a normal military vehicle and spews white smoke from its exhaust pipe, but it’s incredibly slow.
The most frightening thing, though, is the muzzles of the machine guns that protrude from the side of the metal box. We immediately drop to the ground or dodge to the side, but some men react too late and are torn apart. My brothers in arms, mowed down like long stalks of wheat reaped by a farmer.
We’ve avoided the initial attack, but by no means are we safe. The moment we feel it’s okay to stand up, a barrage of rifle fire comes at us from a different direction. An impact strikes my helmet like a hammer, and the momentum launches me backward.
For a second, I think I’ve died. But then I realize I can still hear the sounds around me, so I must still be breathing. The bullet must have just grazed my helmet instead of piercing it and going into my head. A stray bullet that ricocheted in my direction.
My vision swirls, and my head thunders. The pain causes my stomach to churn, and I fight back an intense urge to vomit.
Rolling over in the mud, I throw up a little bit. No blood is mixed in with the bile, meaning I haven’t taken a bullet to the torso. The excruciating stress makes my stomach tremble. I press myself to the ground and hide beneath a crumpled corpse.
I stare at the scene unfolding around me from where I lie on the ground.
The metal boxes slowly change directions and continue their assault on the German soldiers, expelling horrifying numbers of empty cartridges from their hatches. Their brass-colored shine is scattered all across the battlefield, making it feel like some sort of bizarre nightmare.
Timing my attack carefully, I stand up and run toward the machine gunner’s blind spot. As I vault over the debris covering no-man’s-land, I pull a stick grenade free from my belt. I unscrew the cap covering the end of the handle and toss it aside, then yank on the wire that comes tumbling out with the ball, the friction causing a spark. I crank my arm backward and throw the grenade at the metal box with all my might.
It explodes brilliantly against the metal box, and I feel a surge of satisfaction. But once the white smoke clears, I see there isn’t a single hole in its surface.
My fellow soldiers also begin to throw their stick grenades, as if inspired by my actions, but the enemy doesn’t even flinch. The grenades that land on the top of the boxes bounce off the metal frames and explode in different directions, blowing away the bodies of soldiers caught up in the blast.
I order everyone to retreat. There’s nothing we can do except target the metal boxes with our heavy artillery once we’ve fallen far enough back. We engage a group of British soldiers as we flee, and the fighting turns chaotic. We stab them with our bayonets, they stab us with theirs. We shoot them with our rifles, and they shoot back at us. I turn my empty rifle around and ram the butt into a soldier’s stomach, then hit him across the face, creating a torrent of fresh blood. My world turns red. Amid my hazy thoughts, a voice inside my head screams wildly that I mustn’t die. That I have to survive.
The metal boxes press forward incessantly, crushing everything in their path. Incapacitated soldiers are caught up in those revolving belts, but even then, the metal boxes show no signs of stopping. Inhuman screams of agony echo across the battlefield. I stand motionless, listening with the other exhausted soldiers. No one can tell if the men being ground up in the belts of those boxes were allies or enemies. Blood trickles down my head, wetting my face. At some point, my lower eyelid has stopped twitching. Either the muscles or nerves in my face have died, or my soul has been destroyed completely, leaving me no longer able to react to this reality.
An explosion causes the metal box in the lead to tilt to one side, dig into the earth, and become stuck. We cheer and run past it. It wasn’t an artillery shell that demolished the ground beneath it, but a grenade. We aren’t sure if someone threw their grenade perfectly through a gap in one of the revolving metal bands or if a wounded soldier pulled the string right before being run over.
We dive into a friendly trench, and the soldiers lining the dirt wall immediately start firing their rifles at the enemy. A medic dashes over to help anyone bleeding, then has any men who can’t move carried away on stretchers. It isn’t just my head where I’ve been injured, but all over my body. I was running too frantically to notice, but there are deep wounds all over my body, sustained during the melee without my realizing it.
Once my nerves settle a little, I realize I can’t move at all. My injuries are worse than the ones I received when that blast from the artillery shell hurled me through the air.
I don’t feel a sense of despair. Even if the pain lasts until my wounds close, the Count’s magic will heal me in good time. I’ll just have to pretend to be injured until then.
They load me onto a stretcher and discuss taking me to a field hospital.
“Is Fritz Ziegel okay?” I ask.
“He’s gone on ahead,” replies a medic.
“Where to?”
“Try looking for him where you’re going,” the man says. “We don’t know where people get sent.”
“He went to a hospital, though, right? Not heaven?”
They don’t tell me anything else.
As I lie on the stretcher, my eyelids grow heavy.
I’ve lost too much blood and drift out of consciousness.