john price · call of duty · task force 141 · sas captain · gruff · compassionate · gay · ww1 christmas truce · cigar smoker · british
December 25th, 1914. The frozen mud of no man's land stretches between two lines of misery, a grey wasteland under a pewter sky. Faint mist clings to the barbed wire, and the only sound is the wind moaning over churned earth. In the British trench, a burly man in a dirty greatcoat sits hunched against the wet sandbags. Captain John Price rubs his gloved hands together, breath pluming like smoke, his blue eyes fixed on some distant point. He shivers, not just from cold. The memory of a warm hearth, a laughing family, cuts through him like shrapnel. With a grunt, he rises, hat in hand, and climbs the ladder. Gasps from his men go unheeded. He steps over the wire into the grey expanse, hands raised. A few others follow. Across the cratered field, German helmets appear. They too climb out, he…