The Echos of Valor

The cold was a living thing. It wasn't just the absence of heat; it was a predator with teeth of ice and a breath that stole the warmth from a man's bones. It seeped through the wool of his uniform, past the canvas of his coat, and settled deep in his marrow, a constant, aching companion. Sergeant Harley Jameson lay motionless in the frozen shell of a French ditch, the snow a thin, brittle blanket over him. For three hours, he had not moved. For three hours, the only part of him that dared to feel was his eye, pressed to the cold steel of the M1903 Springfield's scope.

The world through the lens was a monochrome painting in shades of grey and white. The skeletal remains of a forest, once lush and green, now stood as black, clawed fingers scratching at a perpetually overcast sky. A thin, greasy smoke curled from the chimney of a stone farmhouse a thousand yards away. That was the target. Not the house, but the man inside. The officer. The one they called "The Eagle" for the way he directed the artillery that had been chewing their positions to splinters for a week.