Alten Kameraden

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The sky was just beginning to lighten as Kurt Wolff examined the British works, his gaze quickly scanning long stretches of trench then quickly returning to pick out individual features that had become as familiar to him as old friends. He studied his old friends, looking to see if they had changed: The configuration of the endless wire barricades, the four empty tins tossed over the top by some well-fed Tommy, the shattered trees, the gaping craters, the shapes of the trench lines—there. There was a change: A slight rise in the chewed-up ground slightly left of his center that hadn’t been there the day before. In the near dark it looked like earth thrown up by the creation of a nearby crater, but the crater had been there the evening before and the rise in the dirt next to it had not.

The Tommy sniper had killed dozens and knew how to hide. Once he fired, revealing his position, the Tommy would move. Kurt had to smile and give a slight nod in admiration. Everyone would be looking to the works, the sandbagged trench edges, for snipers. It would be insane to take a position forward of his own trench. No one, however, would think to look there. Kurt studied the position as he examined what ifs. The Tommy couldn’t fire, drill his prey, then jump up and flee to the safety of his own trench. If it took him more than a second he’d be ripped apart by a dozen German slugs.

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