Reincarnated: Vive La France

Moreau crouched low behind a shattered log, blood running down his temple from shrapnel.

He barely noticed.

The roar of gunfire was constant.

His rifle was down to its last magazine.

"Status!" he barked into the radio.

Renaud's voice came back, half-buried in static. "Foxtrot is twenty minutes out. Paris acknowledged the distress. Two light armor columns en route. ETA forty-five minutes. Air support denied too dark."

"Of course," Moreau muttered. "We'll be bones by then."

The enemy didn't let up.

Mortar shells rained sporadically, shredding trees and limbs.

MG fire danced across the trench line like a madman's paintbrush.

Faure's voice rose behind him. "Weiss is safe! Family's secure behind medical crates! No casualties to them yet!"

Moreau fired over the trench lip.

A black-uniformed shape went down.

He ducked again just as a burst kicked up dirt inches from his face.

"'Yet' is doing a lot of work in that sentence, Faure!"

A fresh detonation tore open the left flank.

Lemaitre's section crumbled.

"We've got a breach!" Delcourt screamed, dragging a bleeding private behind sandbags. "Left trench is gone!"

"Pull back to center! Focus fire on the breach!"

"WE'RE OUT OF SMOKE!"

"Then throw dirt, piss, insults anything! HOLD!"

Girard slammed another belt into the M36-R and raked the ridge, sending two more attackers tumbling back.

Then a round punched through the gunner's side.

"NO!" Girard dove forward, pulled him down. "Medic! Fuck MEDIC!"

None came.

Across the line, Rousseau limped over, his helmet gone, a cut pouring blood down his face.

"Lemaitre's down! Right side's folding!"

Moreau grabbed him. "You hold the center with me. Faure stays on Weiss. Everyone else fights until their rifle jams or their body does."

Behind the trench line, the Weiss family huddled under a sloped slab of overturned crates and medical canvas.

The boy sobbed silently.

The daughter hadn't moved in minutes.

The mother was feverish.

Dr. Weiss gripped his satchel with both hands, whispering equations under his breath like prayers.

Faure checked the mother's pulse.

Weak but steady. "You're safe here," he said.

Weiss looked up, eyes bloodshot. "They won't stop."

"I know."

"You have to destroy it if they break through."

"They won't."

Weiss looked at him. "You don't believe that."

"I don't need to believe it. I just need to keep shooting."

A new roar rose above the chaos.

Engines.

Tracked ones.

Then the first thump of a 37mm shell.

The enemy fire paused only for a moment as a Renault R35 smashed through the underbrush on the far left flank, its gun already rotating.

"R35 on site!" a voice shouted over comms. "Armor support from the southern road!"

The tank took up position behind a ravine and opened fire.

A black-clad squad of attackers vanished in smoke and shrapnel.

Cheers rose up from the trench line but Moreau wasn't celebrating.

"Driver, reverse! Cover that breach!"

Another tank followed.

Then another.

Behind them, more men came Foxtrot squad, then support from Fort Teyssières, dispatched blindly by a battalion commander who heard Paris had ignored a firefight on their own soil.

"Reinforcements!" Rousseau laughed, half-sobbing. "Fucking finally!"

They dove into the trenches.

Fresh blood.

Fresh magazines.

The line surged.

"Push! PUSH!" Moreau yelled, voice hoarse.

Faure left the family briefly to grab ammo from a fallen comrade.

"Delcourt, you still alive?!"

"Barely! Got two kills, one jam, and a bayonet if it comes to that!"

Rousseau popped over the trench, fired a PAP burst, then ducked again. "They're shifting to our right! They're regrouping!"

"They're stalling," Moreau said. "Waiting for another wave."

It came five minutes later.

Bigger.

Louder.

Gunfire returned, heavier, more coordinated.

A light machine gun was set up on the ridge and began hammering the trench line.

A mortar exploded twenty feet from the family's shelter.

The daughter screamed.

Weiss shielded them all.

Faure sprinted back, dragging a body to reinforce the barrier.

"They're targeting the satchel!" he shouted.

Delcourt fired blindly toward the origin of the mortar. "Of course they are!"

Moreau slammed a fresh clip into his rifle.

"To all units collapse onto the family's location. This is the final line."

One by one, squads repositioned.

The trench now curved into a semicircle around Weiss's shelter.

Every man was shoulder-to-shoulder, soaked in blood, mud, and adrenaline.

Silence fell briefly.

Then came a voice from the darkness.

German-accented.

Amplified.

"French soldiers! Lay down your arms. You are surrounded. The family belongs to us. Hand them over, and we will allow you to leave. One minute to comply."

Moreau stood.

"No deal."

He fired one shot toward the sound.

"Thirty seconds," the voice said.

Moreau looked at Faure. "If they breach, burn the satchel. Even if it kills Weiss. You understand?"

Faure stared at him, then nodded slowly.

"Yes, sir."

Rousseau grinned, loading a grenade. "Can I answer them?"

Moreau gave a short nod.

Rousseau stood, hurled the grenade into the forest, and shouted, "COME AND TAKE THEM, YOU BASTARDS!"

Explosion.

Screams.

And all hell broke loose.

The enemy surged out of the trees like locusts.

Fire poured into the trench.

Explosions burst behind the line.

French soldiers rose as one and fired.

It was chaos.

It was fire, death, thunder.

It was war.

Delcourt was bayoneting a man over the trench wall.

Girard was dragging a wounded soldier with one arm, firing with the other.

Faure was shielding Weiss's daughter with his own body, firing into the darkness.

Rousseau's machine gun jammed he tossed it and picked up a dead man's rifle.

Moreau was everywhere shouting, shooting, reloading, bleeding from the leg now, but still upright.

Another wave.

Then another.

Still they held.

Still the family lived.

By the time the second armor column arrived, the ground was red.

Reinforcements stormed the ridge, retook the treeline, pushed the last of the attackers back into the dark.

At 05:11, the last shot was fired.

And silence fell again.

Broken.

Shattered.

But still standing.

Weiss stepped out from behind the crates, clutching his satchel.

Moreau slumped against the trench wall, helmet gone, face tense with blood and soot.

"You're safe," he said.

Weiss nodded. "Thanks to them."

He looked at the soldiers, at the dead, at the wounded.

At the forest that had tried to kill them.

Then he looked at the satchel.

"This... better be worth it," he whispered.