[ WP ] [ RF ] World War 1 never ended .

Along the line you can hear the sirens begin from far away, sometimes up to a minute before the siren in our own bunker. Day or night the attacks can come, rockets and bombs, raining down on millions of men, hunkered in their haz-suits, desperately hoping that it's only a chem attack and there is n't going to be a tactical nuke to follow. 
 
 I've been lucky, five months in this post and we've always had warning before the attack. When we arrived it was to a deserted bunker, the previous occupants had died in an attack that had no sirens and millions along the line had died. Our first job was to burn them; one hundred and forty two men of the 852 infantry, one hundred and forty two puffs of smoke. 
 
 When we're suited up, we go into ready positions, backs against the concrete trench wall, viewers poking out and auto turrets ready to fire at the first sign of an enemy advance. After a few hundred drills it's instinct, although its been over a year since either side even tried to move the line and that was preceded by the biggest tactical nuking in a generation. 
 
 No one is likely to try that again, although we moved nearly four hundred miles in that attack, it led to retaliation on our cities. Manchester, Napoli, Chicago, Buenos Aires, all gone. God knows what the central command are planning now, but the theory most of us have is that we're going to sit here until they all die of old age, or we do. 
 
 As a boy I was told that the war was going to be over soon. The propaganda used to show our boys pushing across the French and German landscapes, brave boys marching to victory. f they were n't lies then I'd like to know why we're back here again, in the same place as we were fifty years ago, at least according to the old history books I've seen. 
 
 My Lieutenant tells me that in officer training they learn about the wider picture. They're told that we own ninety percent of Africa, all of Asia and more than half of Europe; we spend a week working out where we were by the stars once and we're closer to what was Spain than we are the Soviets, I think we've all just come to accept anything we're told as lies. 
 
 Finally they come, soft crumps of bombs landing and spilling out their gas. Looks like we're not being nuked today, looks like we'll get to live in this hole for another few weeks. They'll not be coming now, the haz-suits are too bulky to make the trip across no man's land, if they come it'll be in a few hours when we can move to just breathers. 
 
 I've had enough, putting down my scanner I stand from my half crouch and stretch out and then move to the ladder. The Lieutenant looks at my in disbelief, not even bothering to yell at me to get down, to get back. No one goes into no man's land, but huddling in the mud will serve no purpose. 
 
 It takes me only a second to get up the ladder and suddenly I am in open space. Craters stretch off in all directions, but there are no walls within touching distance. Even in the hot plastic of my suit I feel more free than I have in months. Now my Lieutenant is on the radio, demanding I come back, but I do n't care. The pink swirling gas is pretty, I'm sick of mud, I want space. 
 
 A light rain has begun and I turn around, seeing this landscape more clearly than I have in months. The gas swirls and forms shapes, animals, buildings and even people. Advancing people. 
 
 The gas thins as the rain dampens it down and I realise, it's not shapes, it's people, a line of people stretching as far as the eye can see, guns raised and ready. They're coming. After all this time, they're coming and all I can feel is relief.
