Three days later.
The soldiers on the Breslau Fortress were yawning in the warm morning light, leaning against the parapets and chatting about the harvest and women at home.
It wasn't that they were slack; with tens of thousands of troops at the front, and the Oder River in between, there was no way there would be any battle here.
A corporal turned, preparing to relieve himself outside the fortress, but suddenly froze and said to the soldier beside him, "Am I seeing things, or is that a cannon?"
The other soldiers laughed and came over, but before they could lean out to look, they felt a tremor underfoot, and two of them were knocked down by the flying debris.
The belated roar of cannon fire finally reached their ears.
"Alert! Enemy attack!"
The commander of the fortress, looking through his binoculars at the densely packed Austrian soldiers on the eastern side and the continuously flashing artillery fire, turned pale.
