John or Dmitri Volkov as of now thought it was thunder but when he opened his eyes, he realized he was wrong.
Explosions erupted around him. Smoke and fire billowed into the sky. The earth shook like a living thing. The roar of a Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber pierced the air as it screamed down from above.
"What… what's happening?" Dmitri's first instinct was to get up and assess the situation, but before he could rise, a rough hand shoved him back down into the dirt.
"Down!" shouted a bearded man with a dusty, bloodstained face.
"Are you insane?" Dmitri exclaimed.
"Stay on your stomach!" the man barked again.
Dmitri's mind raced. He had been skiing in the Carpathians just moments ago and now he was here, in this hellish landscape.
He looked around, desperately hoping it was all a nightmare. But the screaming shells, the whistling shrapnel slicing through the air, and the bodies torn apart and scattered across the mud told him otherwise.
"Where… where am I?" Dmitri stammered, his voice trembling. "What is this?"
"It war, Dmitri!" the bearded man replied. "The Germans are advancing!"
Shulka? War? Germans? Dmitri's head spun.
He glanced at the man, then down at himself and froze. He was wearing a tattered Soviet uniform. The others around him, too, were Red Army soldiers, faces streaked with dirt and fear.
A movement caught his eye. Another figure crawled toward him or rather, what remained of it. The soldier's legs had been blown away, his body a mass of blood and torn fabric. One hand stretched toward Dmitri, trembling with effort. When he tried to shout, only a gurgling cough of blood escaped.
Dmitri couldn't look away.
But he couldn't close his eyes either. Every instinct screamed that a shell could tear him apart in the next second.
He curled himself into the dirt, burying himself as best he could, letting out a raw, unrecognizable cry.
Time passed or maybe it didn't but eventually, the artillery fire ceased, replaced by the cries of the wounded and dying.
Dmitri dared to take a deep breath, hoping it was finally over.
He was wrong.
"Germans! The Germans are coming!"
He raised his head and saw them: German soldiers, rifles at the ready, advancing in skirmish formation through the smoke.
Dmitri froze. The bearded man beside him, shaking, grabbed his rifle. This was no training exercise. The enemy was approaching. Death was imminent.
"No… this isn't my war!" Dmitri thought desperately. He did not belong here neither to this time nor this place. He shrank further into the dirt, wishing he could simply wait it out. If only he weren't trapped, if only he could run…
An officer, red collar tabs gleaming, strode past and stopped. His gaze fell coldly on Dmitri.
"Pick up your rifle, soldier!"
"No, Comrade Instructor!" the bearded man protested, shoving the rifle into Dmitri's hands. "He's lightly wounded. Let him rest!"
The instructor didn't answer. He reached into Dmitri's tunic pocket, pulled out his soldier identification card, scanned it quickly, and returned it with a flick.
"You're Dmitri, right? I remember the name," the officer said. "If I ever see you putting down your weapon and hiding again, I won't call you I'll shoot you myself."
He raised his Tokarev TT-33 pistol for emphasis.
Dmitri's heart froze. Not just at the threat, but at the absolute detachment in the officer's eyes as if taking a life were nothing more than a routine chore.
From that moment, Dmitri understood: this was a battlefield, and it had rules. Break them, and he would die.
He raised his rifle and aimed into the distance.
"God… Dmitri," the bearded man muttered. "Your rifle isn't loaded!"
Dmitri's face burned. A military enthusiast back in modern Russia, he knew how to handle firearms but nothing in the books or simulators could prepare him for this.
He loaded the Mosin-Nagant rifle and raised it again. The Germans were only five hundred meters away now.
They moved with deadly precision, splitting into teams to cover each other. Machine gunners and mortar crews took the high ground, coordinating under infantry cover. Dmitri's stomach churned. He was a rookie he knew nothing about this brutal reality.
Four hundred meters.
An officer near the trench blew a small horn. "Comrades! The Germans attack us treacherously, but their efforts are doomed to fall! The trenches are your safest fortresses..."
A mortar shell cut his words off. He and nearby soldiers were thrown skyward and crashed down. The German forces had pinpointed their positions, exploiting every chance to break morale.
Three hundred meters.
Dmitri could hear the Germans' boots on the frozen earth. The commander still hadn't ordered fire.
His hands were slick with sweat. He knew why: the Soviets' inexperienced recruits often missed at long range. But Dmitri knew better. He had studied the Great Patriotic War in depth. He understood the weapons, the mortars, and the tactics of the Wehrmacht.
German infantry carried 50mm mortars, one per squad. Their effective suppression range was three hundred meters, deadly enough to devastate unprepared Soviet positions.
The officer hoped to draw the enemy closer, but Dmitri knew this gamble could be fatal.
He steadied his breathing, aimed at a German soldier charging forward, and squeezed the trigger.
The war had begun.