(i'm getting there, i promise)

The battalion moves back to the trenches after a week in billets, just as Bradford is getting used to sleeping aboveground again. The men have been drilling and training under the orders of the divisonal commander, getting ready for another offensive. Bradford has only received the vaguest of orders from Lt Colonel Berridge, but with the understanding that when the lt colonel knows more, his company commanders will know more too.

So for now, it's another few days in the front-line trench, with the mud and the rats and the crowded conditions and the constant shelling, stand to and scouting parties and trench repair and trying to keep his men from going mad.

( Perhaps he's been lucky – no one has cracked up completely yet )

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note: it must have really sucked to have gotten buried by a falling trench wall. people did die that way, tho.