The trench rocked as the shells smashed through barriers and threw men from there holes like rabbits. Pvt. Talbot tried to make his body small enough to fit entirely inside his steel helmet, and prayed that a lucky round wouldn’t land directly in his dugout.

He supposed that wouldn’t be the worst though he had heard that a gas shell had managed to smash through one of the dugouts in XII army and had filled the entire place with mustard. Not a man had gotten out.

He worked out the picture of Cathy and stared at it as the shells rocked the bare bulb that hung from the earth ceiling. With his back pay and the money he had saved before he dreamed about the beautiful ring he would buy her.

He was shocked from his revelry buy the sudden silence and the rush outside to man the trenches. He never heard the star of the second bombardment, and never felt the shell the blasted behind him.

Cathy never got her ring, just a telegram, “Regret to inform you”.