The Uberwatcher1 and the Tommy-Scout spotted each other for the glint of glass in the other’s binoculars. For a moment, the two surveyors just stared, the Tommy2 transfixed on the Soldat2. The Uberwatcher had a rifle; the Scout a handgun, but both were locked in a staring contest. It was the Tommy who acted first, raising his handgun high into the air and firing three shots off, the agreed number to wake up his comrades. His gun-hand wavered and he felt a brief moment of anxiety, about to fire another three shots before the Uberwatcher influenced him not to in a rather barbaric way; a bullet.
For a moment, all was quiet as the officers crept into position, relaying a command back down the line. The intense silence was soon broken by a faint whistling, high from above, followed by a crashing explosion as the mortar landed, sending sharp points of shrapnel down on a troop of Alpenjagers’s3 heads, who had snuck out for nightly raid, the first men of the slaughter that was to come. The Uberwatcher ducked back down into his own trench, knowing that the screams of the mountaineers would wake up his friends.
Soon, there was a steady line of them, Aplenjagers, Uberwatchers, Officers, Soldats, a lonely platoon of Sturmtruppen4, Infanterist5, all lined up with rifles, handguns, the odd MP186, grenades, and of course; the MG08’s7 were set. They sent back a mortar of their own, the half-awake Tommies hearing the whistling and ducking away, only to fumble with their clumsy Small Box Respirator8. The crouched Englishmen smell the tell-tale sign of the gas that was coming down the cock-eyed trench9; the reek of assured agony, destiny-bound to choke them. If it wasn’t for the interfering mask; that destiny would be reached. With no time to be mourners for the clumsy fools who now choked, having not heard the shots to wake, the brits now stood firm, or rather, they crouched firm, waiting for the gas to be blown away by the gentle breeze.
The machine-gunner was already loading his ‘rifle’10, a devious grin under his mask as he knew the insanity that was about to emerge. A grenade landed in the trench, a Frenchman picked it up to hurl it back, his brown mask- taken from a dead comrade- contrasting the light blue of his outfit. The grenade exploded in the Frenchman’s hand. Now that the blood was flowing and the gas had cleared, the two sides began firing at one another. The sharp-shooters11 and the Heckenschutzes12 were the first to open fire, shooting at each other, a fun bit of mutually assured destruction. The cultured idealism of both sides was lost after the first troop of Sturmtruppen went over the top, after which the machine-gunners started blazing away, the anguished screams lost under the brat-at-at-at of the Vickers13.
Someone managed to get a night-flare up, the harsh light illuminating the battlefield like it was day. With light, that’s when the two sides began to fire openly at each other, Tommy and Soldat falling as the machine that was war began to churn. Three more mortars fell, one after the other, the dirt and shrapnel consuming the ill-equipped Frenchman machine-gunners who had advanced, their Adrian helmets14 worthless against the bits of shrapnel falling as they struggled to un-jam their Chauchats15. One side advanced only to be mown down by the other, the stalemate of the Great War going on, and on, and on.
The Brits felt they had no choice when they called in the tank16, the massive lumbering bullet-sponges rolling out lazily, like sleeping cows rudely awoken for herding. A Scotsman, crawling through an area where the gas hadn’t been blown away, was crushed by his own tank as it brayed the trench, landing the front half inside with a ground-shaking ‘whump’. The giant beast began the incline upwards, the angled treads17 catching the other side of the trench, still slick from bits of the crushed Scotsman. A stosstruppen18 ran out, a resounding noise as the grenade he had thrown exploded atop the tank. It wasn’t effective. The machine gunner inside mowed him down and the shield kept on creeping forward, destroying the barbed wire and posts. A heckenschutze with more guts than brains took a potshot at the tank, the heavy 13.2 mm TuF19 round fired from his Tankgewehr20 slamming into the tank, loosing most of its momentum after the initial penetration, and ricocheting about inside the metal box. It was like a blender, the large round decimating the crew. With only one man left alive, and he wasn’t much help with that round stuck in his gut, the tank stopped, the old pre-war tractor engine21 inside still churning.
Now using the behemoth as cover, Tommies ducked behind the dead tank, firing at the Fritz2. One had the guts to duck around and climb into the tank, disengage the Hochkiss22, climb back out toting the thing, and open fire at the German trench with it. That didn’t work so well when the same heckenschutze blew his brains out with another TuF round. A neat little hole could be seen in his helmet- well, not so little, but a thirteen-point-two millimeter hole. Nice. The round kept going on, not even remotely slowed by the thickness of the now-dead Tommy’s helmet, or his brain, or skull. It flew out and clocked another man in the head; a total accident. Two for the price of one, nice shot herr heckenschutze.
But the Tommies who were advancing thought otherwise, and the sniper’s body was soon full of rifle rounds, little .303s23 to his 13.2s. But quantity over quality tends to be the factor in war, so. The Tommies dived into the trench, one shoving his rifle off and to his back as he drew out his personal pistol, a Webley Mark V24 that had belonged to an officer before him. That officer had been killed during an insane attempt at another Christmas truce in 191525. The man holding it now had the sense to keep his head down when the German’s started shooting at the officer, who had climbed up to set up a Christmas tree on his parapet26.
A burst of fire was heard from behind as a Strosstruppen let loose with a burst of his MP18, one of the few in the trench. The Tommies fell, the man with the revolver getting lucky- he managed to shoot the Strosstruppen from the ground. He was fumbling with his coat to get at his two-wound dressing when a quick butt stroke from a friend of the Strosstruppen ended that venture. A short-lived victory as a British mortar- full of a lovely musty-hay smelling gas27- smashed in front of the trench, the mustard gas bellowing out and engulfing the German’s trench. The injured laying at the bottom of the trench were the first to go, faint cries of ‘mien leben28’ and ‘mutter29’ lost under the yelling of others to ‘put their damn masks on now, are you deaf’, if you excuse the blunt translation. None escaped injury all together, none of them had the gloves proper to keep the gas from touching their skin30. Some were lucky enough to get out, if you count hopping out to get mowed down by machine gunner’s lucky.
With a bloody great hole in the line, Frenchmen, Scots, Brits, with the support of a few Canadian snipers, began to charge. Masks on, men. M-masks on, men? Men?! The idiots ran into their own gas, two of them forgetting to put on their masks. Another man who had his mask on fell to the ground screaming; turns out when you remove the plastic in a gas-mask’s eyepieces to clean them it breaks the seal. Good work. The others didn’t falter, they had a job to do. Under the guise of the gas, an armament of men, armed with clubs and pistols, some with bayonets, rushed in to attack at the Fritz. Helmets aren’t worth a damn thing when you get your throat slit, as many of the Germans- some who were struggling to see; for the flare was faltering, unlike the men- quickly learned. One officer with enough smarts about him to see they were knackered called for a retreat. At first, the other Fritz thought him a coward, but when they say lines of British, French, and Canadians rushing at them, they went ahead and called for retreat as well. The English and French jumped down into their trench, firing at the Germans over the parados31.
1; Uberwatcher, German man who carried binoculars and a pistol, sometimes a rifle. Pronounced “oobervacher”.
2; Tommy, nick-name for British and Canadian soldiers. Soldat; German for soldier, pronounced ‘Soul-datt’. Fritz, British nick-name for German soldiers.
3; Alpenjager, German mountan-troop. Later used as generic soldier, often equipped with grenades. Pronounced “Al-pin-ya-gir”.
4; Sturmtruppen, groups of Strosstruppen. Pronounced “stermtroopin”
5; Infanterist, German for ‘Infantry’. Pronounced ‘in-fan-trest’.
6; MP18, submachine gun used by the German Army. Very few made, only about 35,000. During WWI possibly 10,000 made. Thought that only 5000 were actually used. Fired the 9x19mm Parabellum round. Open-bolt blowback. Fired around 500 rounds a minute. Some chambered for 7.63×25mm Mauser rounds. 32.8 inches long in total. 7.9 inch barrel. MP18 stands for Maschinenpistole 18/I.
7; MG08, machine gun used by the German Army. Very common. Used as the standard machine-gun for the German Army. Saw use as everything from an airplane armament to anti-aircraft to mounted machine gun on the ground to anti-tank weapon. Derived from the Maxim Machine Gun. Water-cooled. Large water jacket on the front. Held roughly a gallon of water. Mounted on tripod. Fired the 8.57mm IS round. A later design was to fire the 19x92mm TuF round. Mg08 stands for Maschinengewehr 08. Pronounced ‘Ma-sheen-in-geh-ver’. Fired rounds off of a belt. 46.3 inches long. Barrel length of 28.4 inches. Manned by four people, each trained to fire the weapon. Fire-rate of about 500 rounds a minute. With water jacket filled and tripod, the whole thing would weigh about 152.1 pounds. Without the water jacket or tripod, the gun weighs 58.4 pounds. 8.8 pounds worth of water. 84.9 pound tripod.
8; Small Box Respirator, used by the British, French, and Canadian armies. Gas-mask kept in bag on the front of neck, atop the breast of the soldier wearing the bag.
9; Trenches were dug in a zig-zag pattern as to keep one man from standing at one end with a machine-gun and firing down the whole thing. Many trenches were dug in odd patterns to keep this from happening.
10; Machine-guns were issued as crew-based weapons, but the man who was trained to fire it considered it his ‘rifle’.
11; ‘Sharp-shooter’ was the English term for a sniper until WWII.
12; Heckenschutze is German for sniper. Pronounced ‘hek-en-schoots’
13; Vickers, standard-issue machine gun for the British Army. Very common. Used as standard-issue machine gun. Saw use as anti-aircraft gun, mounted on tanks, and as standard ground-weapon. Derived from Maxim Machine Gun. Water-jacket on the front. All together the weapon weighed about 51 pounds. Couldn’t find the information on the components by themselves. Also held a gallon of water, but could be fed from jerry can on the side. Three-man crew, all trained to fire it. Fired British .303 rounds on a belt. 44 inches long. 28 inch barrel.
14; Adrian helmet, French helmet used during WWI, WWII, and still used today for ceremonial purposes. Thin construction, weak build. Could be dented with a punch. Later used by the soviets during WWII.
15; Chauchat, French machine gun. Worthless. Failed in combat more often than students who never pay attention in class on tests. Not worth going into detail about.
16; Tank, used by the British. Make note of 21. The one here is vaguely defined, but I suppose it would be a Mark I Male. Would have contained: Two Hotchkiss 6 pdr QF, three Hotchkiss machine guns.
17; The treads had to be angled in a rhomboidal shape with the raised end being in the front, as to clear trenches.
18; Stosstruppen. German for ‘storm trooper’. Formed into groups of Sturmtruppen. Carried grenades, carbines, and handguns. Later carried MP18s, as shown here. Pronounced ‘St-oss-tr-up-in’
19; 13.2mm TuF (Tank und Flieger, tan-k, ooh-nd fl-ei-gir, translates to ‘tank and flier’), fired by the sniper to took out the tank. Massive round. First anti-tank round in the world. A version of the MG08 that fired this round was developed. Expected to be used to shoot down airplanes.
20; Tankgewehr, bolt-action rifle. Single shot only. Had to manually insert a round into the chamber each time you fired. Fired the 13.2 TuF round. Weighed 35 pounds unloaded. With ammo and bipod, total weight was 41 pounds.
21; Some tanks were fabricated so quickly that the engines had been used in tractors during the years prior to war.
22; Hotchkiss, light machine gun made in France. Unlike the Chauchat, didn’t suck. Loaded by either stripper-clip or belt-fed. Weighed 26.5 pounds. Fired the .303 British round, although there are many versions. The machine-gun used here is a Hotchkiss m1909. 48 inches long, 25 inch barrel.
23; The .303 round is the round that the British used in their rifles and machine guns.
24; Webley Mark V, revolver. Six rounds. Top-break. Double-action. Fired the Webley mark II .455 round.
25; In 1914 there was an unofficial Christmas truce between the two armies. Some sectors, people laid down arms for almost three weeks.
26; Parapet, a specialized line of wood and sandbags to stop bullets. Men hid behind them while firing and reloading.
27; Mustard gas smells like musty hay. I, personally, like the smell.
28; Mien Leben translates to ‘my life’. Pronounced ‘mine leebin’.
29; Mutter translates to ‘mother’. Pronounced ‘mut-ar’
30; Mustard gas causes extreme pain as soon as it makes contact with skin.
31; Parados is a usually smaller parapet on the back of the trench. Most times made out of dirt instead of wood and sand.
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Subject: Rabbot wrote a story! 
