It was dusk already, the fighting from the night before continued on, lingering like the dust spit up from the hours of gun fighting. It wasn't just the fighting from that last night, either. Night after night for the last six days they battled one another, all of it over a disagreement from a hundred years ago that grew like a cancer until there wasn't enough room for more than one tumor. Regardless of how it came to be, it had become the full-scale war that it was on that day, and there were bullets to be fired, curses to be shot, and blood to be spilled.
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"Sarge, we can take them out if we utilize our remaining mortars to take out multiple enemy units all at once." Hopkins' eyes remained focused on his commander, he tried keeping a half-smirk on his face, but his hope kept running dry, and his expression failed him. Sergeant Petronus wasting as little precious time as he could spat to his Specialist, "That's your plan? All of our mortars are being shot at those mother fuckers to keep them from encircling us. If we could Somehow get God to grant us the time we needed, we'd be defenseless."
Hopkins inched towards the ledge overlooking a valley of despair, but only for a moment. His will overpowered him and he stepped away. "Sergeant, with all due respect, we have to do something or we're going to run out of ammunition. Gather Cavan, Reinheil, and Deffer and instruct them to order or forces to focus their fire to keep the enemy back at all costs while we gather the mortars. We'll fire into the larger clusters of enemy troops and reduce their numbers. Once that's accomplished we'll use the opportunity to launch an offensive and gain a foothold on them."
Sergeant Petronus turned to look at Hopkins from his seated position. "You are not the commanding officer, Specialist Hopkins," emphasis was placed on his rank, "your plan has such a high probability of failure that we have a better chance of surviving by continuing as we are. We Will hold them off until their ammunition runs low. We will strike then."
Specialist Hopkins knew there was nothing more he could do. He questioned why he enlisted in the army to begin with when he entered this "plane of death," the proud battlefield that lay around him on all sides. He wanted the easy way out of life. He didn't want to go to college, but he wanted to make something of himself at the same time. He thought the military would be his ticket to life, but now it threatened to end everything. Now he stood in place, unable to confront his officer further, he felt the blood of his brothers in the soil beneath him, and they wanted him to join them. He refused such temptations, his will to live had overcome any of his fear at that moment, he knew that if he didn't do everything he could to defeat the enemy, he faced certain death. Sergeant Petronus dismissed Hopkins, who saluted his commanding officer and joined Reinheil and Alpha company.
M-16 at his waist, Hopkins fell in line next to Sergeant Reinheil and double-checked his weapon. "You're back already. It didn't go over as we'd hoped, did it?" Hopkins answered Sergeant Reinheil by jumping above the trenches and firing in quick bursts. Reinheil did the same, taking extreme care to conserve his ammunition.
The whole of Alpha company spoke not a word for four hours. The monotony of exchanging fire with their enemies was their only expression, and the company as a whole took part in it. The fires of hell tore at their bodies, while their minds had remained safe havens... for a while.
As the battle dragged on, the number of casualties grew, and the black hand of despair caught up to the lesser soldiers and dragged their hearts into the bottomless valley of despair. For soldiers like Hopkins and Reinheil, the hand was simply too slow to catch up to them. For the fallen soldiers, their weapons came to embody their souls, so they could continue the fight from beyond the grave, and as each clip ran empty for the soldiers still fighting, they turned to their fallen brothers for support.
Then the mortars came.
The first one took out just one soldier, but the ones following were fired with climbing accuracy, and became a real threat. Reinheil hit Hopkins in the chest with the butt of his gun, "look over there," he instructed, pointing to the company to Hopkins' rear.
What he saw was unbelievable.
Concentrated mortars to high-density areas, the very strategy he suggested to Sergeant Petronus. Hopkins turned back to Reinheil, "I can't believe this shit," Hopkins fired at a mortar hanging in the air, but couldn't take it out in time. Luckily, it wasn't a good shot and nobody was injured. Hopkins continued firing as he had, simply trying to take out as many soldiers that he could. He was fully aware that consuming all of his ammunition is what the enemy wanted him to do, but he would much rather fight back and face a probable death than a certain one. Reinheil, however, saw it differently. He had tried yelling at Hopkins for him to stand down, but it was to little effect. In fact, Hopkins was the only soldier from Alpha Company still firing.
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