Eric just ran in the direction that he heard screaming. It didn't matter if someone was shooting at him. If he got hit, then he got hit. For now, he wasn't hit yet so it didn't matter. A straight beeline sprinting made the trip very short and the source of the suffering was one pony who had been hit by shrapnel. When the shelling had started, he was inside a foxhole but had been sticking out of it when one had exploded nearby. He noticed one pony that was not moving at all as he slid into the foxhole with the screaming pony.
Shelling be damned, he climbed out of the foxhole and sprinted over to the pony and grabbed him before moving back into the same foxhole, being careful to not drop the soldier into the foxhole. His attention immediately then went to the screaming pony. Shrapnel had shredded one of his legs and part of his hindquarters.
Getting to work, Eric pulled a tourniquet off of his vest and stuck it on the bleeding leg. Working quickly, he then ripped out the two bandages that the wounded soldier was carrying as part of his standard gear and wrapped it as tightly as he could around the damaged part of the hindquarters. He then felt up the soldier's other limbs and performed a wound sweep, he found nothing on the other limbs.
He then put a knee on the wounded hindquarters, eliciting even louder screaming from the pony before turning his attention to the pony he had dragged. Even though his own heart was racing, he could feel that this other soldier still had a heartbeat. Luckily, the unconscious soldier was also actively breathing. Doing a wound sweep on this pony, Eric couldn't find any bleeding. Looking around on the soldier, he found why she wasn't conscious. Her helmet had a significant dent in it.
Well, she was alive and breathing so, good.
At that moment, the shell immediately stopped and everyone noticed. Heads stayed duck down but alert at the sky. While every pony wasn't capable of flight effectively every griffon was. Griffon tactics often involved an artillery attack shortly followed by an attack from both ground and aerial forces.
Hearing gunfire coming from all directions, Eric poked out of the foxhole and flipped the safety down on his AK. He immediately saw a pony and a griffon in hand to hand (hoof?) combat in another foxhole so he quickly ended that. He turned his attention towards the treeline and saw an approaching mass of griffons but before he could fire on them, something hard struck his chest and something else filled his vision while knocking his rifle away.
A griffon had dove in from the air and attempted to spear him through with a bayonet but fortunately for Eric and unfortunately for the griffon Eric's body armor caused the bayonet to snap. The griffon was shortly stunned at this revelation and before he could do anything Eric grabbed one of his lion legs and pulled him down into the foxhole before repeatedly slamming his fist into the griffon's face.
Whether he was dead or unconscious, the griffon stopped moving so Eric picked his AK back up and lit up on the encroaching mass of enemies. His heart was racing too quickly to accurately fire but whatever rounds he put downrange very obviously slow down their advance and sent them scrambling. In the other foxholes, ponies were adding their rifles to Eric's fire and shooting at the sky or the treeline.
Eric's rifle eventually clicked, signaling that it was empty. As he reloaded, the machine guns centered in the center of their bastion defense setup woke up, spraying the surrounding tree lines with machine guns. However, the machine gun fire only lasted a few seconds before it was silenced. 'What the fuck?" thought Eric. Chambering a new round, Eric looked at the other two foxholes. At least two ponies were sticking out of each one and defending this sector.
Climbing back out of the foxhole, he sprinted. This time, he made it for the machine guns. Dirt kicked up around him, implying that they were trying to shoot at him but were missing. Looking back, he sprayed wildly with his AK. He wasn't really trying to hit anything, only trying to keep them occupied. They stopped wasting their ammunition on him by the time me made it halfway to his intended goal, probably more focused on the foxholes.
That was when a griffon dropped from the sky, dead and landing in front of where he was running. Looking up, he saw another griffon, this one diving towards him. Eric aimed his rifle up but before he fired, the griffon closed the distance and knocked his rifle aside. Eric heard a gunshot and felt a bullet impact the plate in his front chest carrier. He didn't have much time to think about it so he shoved the assailant away, immediately seeing the source of the bullet, a revolver that the griffon had somehow drawn. Before he got shot again, Eric let go of his rifle and quickly drew his pistol, firing it from his hip at the direction of the griffon.
Eric didn't stop firing until the griffon dropped and once he did, the pistol was returned to its holster. Heart racing, Eric picked up his AK and aimed up at the sky to check for more possible attackers. He found nothing so he continued his previous goal of getting to the machine guns.
It turned out, the griffons had very much rightly seen the machine gun nests as a serious threat so it had been directly attacked by a team of griffons, that the ponies in the machine gun nest were still combating. Raising his rifle, he started to fire at whatever targets he could target. Griffons dropped, taking as many rounds as needed. When his rifle clicked empty, Eric wasted no time, letting go of it. The rifle fell against his body as it was still slung and in the split second that it did, Eric drew his pistol and started firing with it as fast as he could. It too clicked empty so he drew his revolver with his support hand and fired away but before it emptied, any griffons left were dealt with.
Running forward and getting into the machine gun nests with both handguns in hand, Eric looked at the damage. Many of the members of the machine gun nests were very much no longer in fighting condition. Some were obviously dead while many others were severely wounded. Worse yet, one of the machine guns and its crew had been completely wiped out by a direct mortar impact.
Reloading his AK74, Eric looked at a conscious pony. "Are you hurt?!" he demanded. The pony, shocked at the battle that he partook in, took a precious moment to gather his senses before he could reply. Once he did, he shook his head. Eric picked up the pony and threw him at a working machine gun. "Shoot!"
It took some time, time that would cost lives, to get the two still functioning machine guns firing. By some miracle, there had been enough ponies left unwounded to man them and a few after that to tend to whoever was wounded but their numbers would affect how effective the machine guns would be in the long run. In addition to that, the machine gun that Logan had stolen and set up was also speaking its deadly language in addition to the remaining machine guns they had.
Unfortunately, two sections of their defensive setup were unsupported by machine gun fire. Gritting his teeth, Eric finished reloading his weapons and stood up out of the defenses to get a better look. Both of the unsupported sections were getting hammered. On one of the unsupported sections, despite having no covering fire, the griffons were actually having no progress. The griffons in that section were being held back by the few ponies left in that area and... Tran.
The other unsupported section, the attacking griffons were getting close to overrunning them. Eric finished reloading his pistol and drew his AK. He rose up enough to see and took aim, firing quickly at the encroaching invaders. Bracing the AK against the earth, Eric's rifle took up the role of an impromptu light machine gun. The safety lever was flicked up one position and it spat out a familiar repetitive staccato that many were familiar with.
Eric's first mag definitively scattered their willpower. Even though most of the shots missed, it definitely notified the griffons that they were in sights of someone with a lot of firepower. By the time Eric's second mag went dry, the griffons were stopped in their tracks.
That was when a significant amount of gunfire erupted in the distance, past the attacking griffons. That gunfire quickly advanced on them when suddenly, the griffons advancing on them took flight. Despite the risk, all of them retreated, a few falling to lucky potshots. Eric stood up to look at the other sections. Like a spooked flock of birds, the griffons attacking the other sections had also taken to the skies.
However, the new uninvited guests to join their fray were still approaching, gunfire still alive. With no target left, everypony and Eric stopped firing. Tightening his grip on his rifle, Eric waited. "STEADY!" Eric commanded. Fortunately, their new guests were Wilson and the other members of the Dauntless! Eric breathed a sigh of relief.
-X-X-X-
A separate area was made and dugout for the wounded to be kept. It was in the center of their defensive position but offset to the machine guns, in case those nests were targeted again by mortars. Then, there was the dead. They were kept on the opposite side of the machine guns, in the open. Their was no free time or energy to bury them. They could only be covered.
Wilson did his best to tend to the wounded, starting from the worst. He had his job cutout for him. As he worked, someone tapped him on the shoulder. "What?" He didn't even bother facing them.
Tran's voice answered. "We've gathered all of the badly wounded, except for a few."
"Why?" Wilson demanded.
"One can't be moved and the other, I think I'll be fine." Wilson stopped what he was doing and looked at Tran. There was two long bayonets sticking out of his body.