I'd heard the dawn's all the more beautiful on the day of your death.
I'd heard the sun shafts pierced the gloom more brightly, igniting a spectrum of colours to burst into flame, and you grew a new fondness for the gossamer strands of mist, the spots of sparkling dew.
Codswallop.
The sky was smothered under a storm grey fleece that day, and in place of dew, water putrefied in shin-deep hollows, mixing with the mud and last week's sewage. Fumes from the rot melded with the sulphurous gases wafting over from no man's land to create the foulest miasma - but I barely registered it, not anymore. I'd been breathing it in for too many months.
Eight months, to be exact. Eight months in the Calais trenches, just one row of stakes and two hundred yards separating us from the Germans.
They told us to count ourselves lucky. Bodies littered the ground further down the line. They said when a man went over the top, he was less like to die from a bullet than from tripping over a corpse and fainting. To make matters worse, Butter, their stretcher-bearer, had been shot on the job three weeks back, so once you'd fallen, there was no helping you to get back up.
Decaying in flooded bunkers a few miles to the west is what we got when we drew the long straw. The only action we ever got was gunning down any Fritz's who deigned to stick their necks over their dykes. Not that we cherished such moments for their rarity.
"Often," Markus liked to say, "it's worse for the man behind the gun."
Markus, technically, was a Fritz too. His parents were born in Aachen, but migrated to Brighton just in time for their son to avoid the wrong side of the war; but it wasn't soon enough for him to avoid all the Kaiser and wiener japes from the others.
When I say others, I mean every man in the barracks par me. Sure, I was like to jest about him wanting my sausages when he was feeling a little more good-humoured, but the malicious nature of the others' mockery often escalated to kickings, beatings, gashing holes in his wellingtons, sneaking rats into his pallet. Laughing at poor Markus's expense had entirely lost its appeal, for me.
For these other men though, slaving away in these trenches, with naught to do but reminisce about England and watch their own flesh decay - making another man's life worse than their own was the only way for some of them to get by without going insane.
And even that hardly ever worked; insanity came for us all, after we'd been here enough time, had seen enough death.
Another quote of Markus's.
Well, it certainly won't have been coming for me. Insanity didn't have a chance against the German machine guns in the epic race to end the life of Nikolai Palowski.
That day I was going over the top, with Markus and Eduard and Don and all the other buggering sots that I call my comrades.
I wasn't feeling like much of a hero. It certainly didn't seem like I was fighting to defend my country or my family or The Bloody Greater Good; and that wasn't because I was an immigrant.
Most often, going over the top meant a home stretch to reclaim, what, one hundred, two, yards of French cowflop land for the British. This time, we weren't hoping to gain even that.
We were a decoy mission. A suicide squad of assorted gunners from the expendable arsenal that was the British army. Our aim was purely to draw and distract attention; our motivation was to die so that others may die a few minutes later further down the line.
Captain Goodblood, or Sweetheart, as we liked to call him, had other ideas. In his pre-battle speech he managed to glorify even this desperate foray.
"All men are born to die," he commenced. He stood to our right and a little behind. The rest of us were dispersed along a line of two rows, of which I was in the first - so truly I was meant to die so that the man behind me could die a little later so that the main force in the east could die a little later. How heroic... Only I had no choice in partaking in this noble sacrifice that may or may not yield anything for England. This was more of an experiment for the generals, a testing of a prototype method.
"Most," Sweetheart continues, "fall from gout, a failing of the lungs, a failing of the heart. Some disease grabs them when they least expect or want it and the next thing they know they're trapped in some slow, painful disintegration."
I turned back to see who was standing behind me, who's a--- I was protecting. It was Don. He flashed me a half smile, the same charm he'd use to seduce the trench nurses, but his facial muscles twitched and shook, and the smile failed to reach his eyes.
"They die without purpose. They are beaten by Death. They, none of them, could do what you are doing now. If you signed up for this, then you have beaten Death. If you have ever taken a Fritz down while you were here, then you have beaten Death. If you go out there today, proud and brave, to take Death on by storm, then you are one of our nation's greatest heroes - and you have beaten Death."
I looked around to find Markus... But everyone looked the same, all the same dirt-streaked faces and the same grubby uniforms and the same shaking hands on rifles. Eventually, I thought I might have spotted him, on the second row and far to my left, but I couldn't be sure.
"But remember, heroes, I don't intend to see you all die today. There are two hundred of you, and thirty machiners on the other side. I'll be watching you the entire time. When it comes to it, and you hear a second and a third horn blow, retreat, and I'll have the cooks prepare a special meal for tonight.
"Now let's go and kick Death up his a---."
Let's would infer you going with us, sir. Captain Goodblood presses his lips to his burnished horn and blows: ooooouuuuuuuuuu.
A scrambling, thuds of hands and boots on the rungs of the arranged ladders, scrabbling onto dirt and sandbag walls elsewhere, for a second that was all there was, and I forced myself to not think of anything else, just haul myself up and up and up until suddenly I was above it all, and it was like I'd unwittingly teleported into Hell.
Smokes had been dropped everywhere. My vision was bound by the thick fog creeping over the land like an army of vaporous predators, engulfing anything and everything it touched; the rows of uniforms on either side of me were consumed by it instantaneously. The ground beneath me was soft as quicksand and churned into great valleys and ridges. A death trap. I was wading through molasses.
The gunfire sent bursts of light through the fog. BANG BANG BA BANG BANG. It wasn't like this in the trenches. Each shot was too harsh, too loud, every bullet passed a whisper from my ears. Time blurred and slowed. Men screamed but their cries were muffled, bloodcurdling cries, and I knew that I was screaming too, and I wasn't even hit, but the gunfire was everywhere and I was going deaf and all around me silhouettes were crumpling and falling through the curtains of smoke.
I knew that I was meant to shoot back but I can't find it in me to lift my gun. I could barely force one foot past the other. How could a man keep running towards that inferno, that row of lightening that blasted out thunderclaps, that killer killer tirade?
Suddenly, the entire world in front of me tore apart. Earth and fog alike were decimated like a geyser had erupted beneath the land. Shrapnel dug into my left arm, my chest, my upper thigh, searing like fire. I shuddered back and fell into the icy mud, sinking in and clawing aimlessly with dirty, trembling fingers. I'd lost my gun somewhere, but I didn't know where or how and had no inclination to find out. The gun, the war, King And Country and all my comrades... All vanished and nothing was left but me and the burn and the cold, marshy ground. And the BANG BANG BA BANG BANG BANG.
My hand fell upon a warm patch of earth, hot, even. Automatically, it clenched and viscous liquid and clumps of solid that wasn't soil seeped through my fingers. My head snapped round. Dark liquid-that's-not-mud and solid-that's-not-soil covered my right hand and spilled over the ridge of earth. I couldn't say what part of the body they came from. I couldn't tell which of my friends they belonged to.
I screamed again then, loud and shuddering and croaking but I couldn't hear it, couldn't hear anything over the BA BA BANG BANG BANG BANG and the stifling fog.
The ground erupted again, not just in front of me but all around, BOOM DUM BOOM DUM, and I knew more grenades had struck. I feel ear-splitting silent screaming making the ground shake, or was that the grenades, was it the bodies dropping?
I wanted to curl up and lie still, let the quagmire swallow me if it would, wait until Sweetheart's horn went off again, wait until the war was over.
A splash from behind me, and I turned to see a man sinking into the muddy pool from the other bank, heaving ragged breaths and wiping grime from his face with his sleeve. His eyes flitted up to mine, and I saw that it was Markus.
"Marki!" It hurt to say the word. The corner of his mouth twitched in an echo of a smile, and he mouthed: Niko.
I beckoned him over with the bloodied hand; he half crawled half swam over towards me. As soon as he was within reach, I grabbed his uniform and pulled him into the least masculine embrace I'd ever given in my life. He gripped my back with equal force. The gunfire continued. How long does it take them to kill us all?
My left shoulder was still on fire, and the more I stayed the more it burned, but my muscles had turned to masonry, and I found that I could not let go of him.
Eventually, Markus extricated himself. "No. No, no, no, no. I can't."
He didn't have to explain for me to understand. My mouth filled with talcum and I didn't trust myself to speak, so I just shook my head, forcefully, but the force offered no conviction and the shaking turned into violent spasms. My friend looked so strong, his eyes fierce with determination and duty, a farcical duty long mocked but in the end, the only thing that kept the man going.
"What other purpose can I trick myself into thinking I'm living?"
Poetic fool. "Don't. Don't walk to your death."
"Of course not," he rose to one knee, reclaiming his grip on his rifle. "I'm bloody running."
I couldn't manoeuvre myself fast enough to catch him before he had balanced himself and climbed out of the boggy pit. Before taking off, he turned back to look down at me. "You're my best friend," he said, thickly, and then he was gone.
By the time I'd risen to a squat behind my shielding ridge, squinting across the plain of death and screaming and gunshots, Markus's figure had already been cloaked in wisps of smoke as he lurched away on thumping boots.
An inexplicable panic gripped me, a desperation not to let him out of my sight again. Looking down as I hauled myself up, the sight of the muddy hollow suddenly repulsed me, sickened me. What is a man who would cower here while his comrade dies?
I rid myself of it. My rifle, or another man's, I did not know, was lying abandoned a few feet away. Scooping it up, I ran after Markus's retreating shape and into the enemy line.
Blasts still rang from all around, but I didn't flinch this time, not so much as before. I could move my legs, though where my left met my hip it bit with every thrust and I was forced to limp, and my arm stung from the simple task of hefting the gun.
OOOOUUUUUU.
The horn.
The horn for retreat, our horn, the horn from the trenches, the a------- Sweetheart, he was calling, calling for...
OOOOUUUUUUUUUUU.
Retreat.
I could not see a wave of men making their way back, presumably there was no wave left to speak of, but the smoke was receding and I could now see shapes tens of yards away and the land was heaving, odd bodies crawling if they were fit to crawl, falling back, creeping back into their hole like worms after a storm.
I wished to go with them, wished to call out for Markus to bid him back, but I knew I could do neither. I could only stand, crouch, wait for the gunfire to subside and my friend to run back when he did... but he didn't. I knew he wasn't dead, it's a juvenile thought but I was convinced that I would know if he'd been taken down, and right then I was so sure, so sure.
The bullets ceased to fly half a minute later, but I was still huddled in the middle of no man's land and Markus had not showed up.
A blood curdling cry shot through the settling silence of the battlefield's echo. A cry of pure agony, resonating from farther up by the German line.
It was Markus. I did not know how I knew, I'd never heard him scream before, but there was a quality in its timbre that was so clearly, so uniquely his.
My limbs were not my own; my brain was empty, I thought nothing, but my body was clambering towards the sound with a phantom burst of energy, like this was the mud crawl drill back in Sandhurst and the Sergeant was threatening the cane.
Another cry, but this one was ragged, a groan through gritted teeth. I reach a bluff, close by, it seems, and raise my eyes to regard the scene beyond.
Six men in navy surround a green capped soldier on the ground, a young man with his right arm soaked in darkness, and one of the navy men had a boot planted on his chest while another knelt and pressed his hand into the injured's ripped sleeve, twisting and pinching while his own hand stained red. Each movement elicited a groan from Markus.
"Want to say, or not?" The kneeling man removed the bullet from his arm and regarded it nonchalantly.
"I said I don't know," my friend's voice was stolid and thick with rancour, "they didn't tell us."
A gun materialized in his tormentor's other hand, and he thrust its barrel hard into Markus's wound. Markus screamed. "And now, eh?"
The trapped man roiled up a globule of bloody mucus and launched it at his interrogator's face. The Fritz pulled the trigger with the gun still pressed into Markus's bullet injury.
DOOM, went the echo of the shot across the dead land. Blood dribbled out of the corner of the cripple's mouth, but this time he did not scream. He had bitten his tongue.
One of the others flinched, and called out to their leader. "Ivan! Jezt reicht es aber mal. Er weiß nichts." That's enough. He doesn't know anything.
His comrade lashed back with quick-fire German too advanced and rapid for my elementary proficiency to discern, but I got the gist of it: no.
My heart was beating in my throat. My hands ached; they had somehow, subconsciously, wrapped themselves around my gun, around the stock and the trigger and the barrel had managed to aim itself at the gang of Germans.
My hands wanted to save my friend. If I could bring myself to do it, I could probably take a man out, two if I was lucky, but my aim had never been the best, not under pressure, and I'd be dead before I could recover from the recoil of the first couple of shots.
But the distraction could be enough to let Markus escape. Simple, wasn't it? Die so that the other could live a little longer, that's what we were born to do.
I was never a hero.
What else was there to do?
I could run. They'd be none the wiser.
What would that make me?
Not dead, that's for sure.
DOOM, another shot. My head whips around and my heart drops back down from my throat to my stomach. The man had shot Markus in the arm again, and his groan dissolved into a whimper.
But he wasn't dead. He wasn't debilitated. It wasn't too late.
To do what? Be a hero?
The German raises his gun to Markus's temple, and mutters something into his ear, and my hands raise my gun too, raise it for the first time today, and I look through the scope and see the cluster of men again, warped and run through with lines and inscriptions.
Why was it different this time, out of all the times, when they were so close and shooting my friend?
I don't want to die.
Coward.
I tried to push down the snakes slithering up my throat, took one last, shuddering breath, and steeled myself to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The sacrifice of a friend.

When the war is over, the medal I'm awarded's inscribed: bravery.