The sky over the border was a hard, steel blue the kind of cold that felt as if it had been poured from a bucket and left to freeze in the air.
Far below it, the countryside moved like living machinery: hedgerows shredded, fields churned into mud, smoke threading toward the sun.
The First and Third Armies did not come clattering in like an answer to a bell; they came like a verdict.
From the vantage of a shallow, dug-in fold in the ground, a platoon watched the line peel open.
Men huddled beneath plate carriers and helmet covers, breath clouding the air, optics fogged.
The weapons in their hands were close cousins to instruments of an era yet to be born, modern, perfected over the course of two decades.
Rapidly innovated and improved to lethal precision.
The first thunder was not ground-born.
A turboprop powered fighter came screaming across the grey, its paintwork a smear against the light.
