Teutonic traveler

Europe 1915

The shrieking sound of a whistle served as the long-awaited signal, rows of men in uniforms and Pickel hauben climbed out of their trench, running across the ravaged wasteland towards another one. Soon machine gun fire erupted out of that trench and hordes of men were dropping dead from gunshot wounds consequently while other struggled to move through the barbed wire.

One soldier threw himself into a nearby ditch to avoid the shooting. He heard someone else drop into the ditch and stammered "This machine gun is tearing us apart; we need to do something!" but there was no reply to his statement.

Confused by the silence he turned around only to be greeted with a bloody corpse. It must have fallen into the ditch after being hit by multiple bullets.

The soldier pocked his head by a small margin out of the ditch to find a way out of his situation, he realized that the machine gun was not too far away from his position. He slid back into the ditch looking for something to throw. That is when he noticed a stick grenade near the corpse, partially buried in the mud.

He slid near the aforementioned grenade, carefully pulled it out of the mud as not to damage it and returned to his spot in the ditch. Taking a deep breath before pulling the cap on the bottom of the stick and throwing it towards the source of the gunshots.

There was a pregnant pause before a yell could be heard, "GRENADE" followed by an explosion. Now with the machine gun fire gone more and more men arrived at the trench. The soldier quickly took the opportunity to run to the trench and open fire on the enemy, pointing his rifle at the nearest target and pulling the trigger. Again, he aimed at another target and repeated the process. After 3 more shots he ran out of ammo in his clip.

The enemy started to retreat; men started to cheer, and the soldier was about to join them. However, a small whistle could be heard, the soldier looked to the sky.

"Artillery!" shouted someone else, the soldier closed his eyes, bracing himself for the upcoming impact.

Pain, his entire body was hurting as if he was just hit by a train and so let out a pained groan as he lifted himself from the ground.

"Easy there, stranger" said an unknown voice.

The soldier gradually opened his eyes, identifying the unknown voice to come from a man with blonde hair and mustache, he wore a blue shirt with white arms and was covered by a gray fur coat.

"You were quite roughed up when I found you, but you seem well enough."

The soldier slowly regained a clearer vision and could make out his environment, looking around he noticed that he was lying on some sheets next to a campfire to his surprise he also saw that he was in a snowy forest and that his backpack and marching gear was lying next to him.

This greatly confused him as the last thing he remembered was fighting in the trenches without his gear furthermore was also the fact that it was not even winter yet. All these questions in his head had only confused him and he decided to ask the strange about it.

"Danke das du mich gerettet hast, aber wie genau bin ich hier her gekommen".

The stranger only gave him a puzzled look and replied, "I'm sorry but I can't understand a word that you are saying." That is when he noticed that the stranger was speaking English, but he certainly didn't look like one of those Tommy's.

"Who are you?".

The stranger quickly struck a heroic pose "I am Tristan the mercenary, Hero of the northern border, protector of the weak and your savior". Dumbfounded by the sudden outburst of the mercenary, he slowly started to get on his feet.

"right… I am Friedrich but people just call me Fred. So how exactly did you even manage to drag me out of the trench and bring me here, last time I remembered there was no snow in sight."

Tristan looked confused "trench? I did not drag you anywhere I merely saved you from freezing to death when I found you here with your stuff."

"Are you serious" retorted Fred even more confused than before "where even am I?"

"you my friend are in the forest near the village and as much as I love to chat i still have something to do, I'm heading to the village you can join me if you want."

The soldier thought about what he just heard for a moment. Staying in this forest won't bring him any answers as to where he is, perhaps there was someone in the village that could send a telegram. With this thought in mind he nodded to Tristan, got up and gathered his belongings for the journey.