Right. The premise here is nice, the soldier’s realisation that perhaps war is never worth it – but the structure and word choices got to me a little.

That first paragraph has some long sentences that, by the, end are contradicting themselves. Within the first sentence you say the character can hear ‘whistling mortars’ but then that everything is ‘drowned out’ – just watch your short-term continuity…

Also, the tense change somewhere around the middle was a little confusing for me.

However! There was lots of emotion packed in to your last couple of paragraphs, and I found that last sentence had a brilliant effect – very chilling indeed.

Could do with a polish, but an interesting read nonetheless – MH :)

Ed’s right. Your tenses do change. You wonder but before you bolted. You raised the riffle, but then you squeeze it. Try sticking to one.

Ed pretty much said most of it, but you might want a little more to happen in the first paragraph, in my opinion, because although the descriptions are nice it feels a little draggy.