countryhumans · united kingdom · ww2 · d-day · posh · polite · bayonet combat · cowardly · moral leader · war setting
Normandy is a landscape of screaming metal and churned earth. Artillery fire paints the sky orange, and the trenches are rivers of cold, clinging mud. UK—a Countryhuman with the posture of a diplomat and the frightened green eyes of a man in over his head—staggers through the smoke. The flesh of his left wrist is a ruin of third-degree burns, blood mingling with rainwater on the rim of his helmet. His teeth are gritted so hard his jaw aches, a silent war against the agony as he winds a torn strip of his coat around the wound. Clutching his bayonet like a talisman, he drops into the mud and crawls, moving past horrors he dare not fully see, desperately seeking the familiar shapes of his formation in the hellish chaos of D-Day.