supermen. Chapter One, Part Five Adolf October 29th, 1914, Ypres, France The dampness wasn’t only in the ever-present fog, but in the soil, in their clothes, and when they breathed it invaded their lungs. The men woke from their holes dug out of the dirt, and grinned at one another. Stunted, hobbled trees reached futilely for the sun, a woeful army surrounding Luther and the other soldiers. Their charge was an attack across the plain on the British line. Friedrich shared a cigarette with Luther, who obliged him by taking a short drag, and returned it. The men fidgeted, glancing at watches and the sun, and the birds flying to note the passage of time. They had been promised glory and honor, and they were hungry for it.   Then the march began, and became a swarm until shrapnel burst on either side, pinning them in the line English of fire. British machine guns cut into them, and they threw themselves down into the earth, crawling across the bodies of the dying, through troughs of soil and water.   They crept through a ditch until it ended, then sprinted across twenty feet of open ground to a pond, and through the pond a hundred yards to a wood. They crawled through the trees on their bellies, as enemy shells splintered them, “As if they were straws,” whispered Luther. The highest rank remaining alive was a leutnant, and he hesitated at the wood’s edge. Shells pounded the earth, shattering rock and soil and uprooting trees. The air was choked by a stinking, green steam. Adolf crawled beside Leutnant Scheel. “Sir?” he said sternly. Scheel collected himself and stood. “For the Fatherland,” he cried as he led the charge.   They ran the distance, over ditches and hedges and wire, and overtook the first British trench. Half a dozen men survived the assault, and leapt down into a pit of English bodies. The remaining English engaged them in fierce bayonet fighting. Luther landed with his bayonet in the gullet of an English sergeant. Scheel pointed to the next trench, and they began a new charge.    Machine gun fire flew through the air and Luther tore Friedrich into a shell crater; one round exploded through his sleeve without touching him. Scheel was dead, along with everyone else. “They fought like heroes,” Adolf whispered.  It was a few minutes more before he realized Friedrich had died, too.   After only a few minutes of peace, Luther was discovered by an advancing regiment, and continued on with them. The Germans were pushed back to their original lines near nightfall. Gazing at the starlit battlefield, pock-marked with shell craters and littered with the remnants of soldiers, he remarked, “How foolish, the men of this morning, believing we could taste victory’s sweetness. The little infantryman in his hole in the ground has a very small field of vision.” Next Part