Prelude
“COVERING FIRE!”
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"FIX BAYONETS! MOVE UP!"
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“AH BUCK! They’ve got a nest set up due east of our position, we can’t move up until it’s taken out!” Shouted the Corporal.
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“SPOTTER!” The Corporal struggled to raise his voice over the fire of the machine gunners behind them.
“Y-yes sir! Right here sir!” A frail and shaking pegasus answered the call. He was a smaller variant of the species, but that gave him an advantage of being harder to hit on the battlefield. The spotter had a rust colored mane and tail with a brown coat, whether or not that was the original color of his coat was hard to tell. The spotter’s cutie mark were telescopic sights overlayed by a pair of binoculars, and the spotter had a pair of those around his neck.
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“Machine gun nest directly ahead of our current position, you can’t miss it! Get an accurate mark and report to radio! MOVE!”
The pegasus saluted and galloped down the northern portion of the trench, throwing up mud and other goop in his wake.
“Alright ponies! Make yourself noticeable! Draw away attention from Private Clear Shot over there!” The Corporal pointed a hoof at the direction the Private left. “ON MY MARK!”
“MARK!”
Several hundred heads, pegasus, earth, and unicorn, all raised up with their rifles at the ready. Only few saw the machine gun slowly turn to face them.
“FIRE!”
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The nest stopped firing for a few seconds, the Gryphons operating the gun ducking from the several hundred deadly pieces of lead flying overhead.
More lead flew towards the pony’s trench, most ducked just in time, but the unlucky few who kept their heads up too long simply flew backwards, landing on the muddy ground with a hard splat.
“BUCK BUCK BUCK!” The Corporal screamed as he saw his stallions go down that simply. He whipped his head around to where he thought the spotter was last.“CLEAR SHOT! Did you get your bucking mar-”
The words died in his throat as he saw the poor Private. Wings pock marked with bullet holes and a broken leg, the bone sticking out from his right foreleg. He must have crashed after his wings got peppered. The injured stallion looked up at him, mouth open and trembling. Tears stained his cheeks. Thankfully the medics got to him in time, and hoisted him up on a stretcher to carry him away.
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A soft whistle could be heard, and the hardened Corporal seemed to be one of few who got the message. As several ponies in his trench ducked, he ducked with them and shouted an order.
EVERYPONY GET DOWN, NOW!”
The whistle turned into a scream as the shell bore down upon whoever was unfortunate enough to receive it.
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And that happened to be the Gryphons, who were firing in vain at the Ponies.
BOOM!
An earth-shattering explosion hit no pony’s land, and the Corporal was temporarily deafened. He watched his men before him, many shivering and looking at him, waiting for an order. Though some occasionally peeked over the trench, and appeared satisfied.
His hearing came back to him, and the chattering fire of the machine gun nest ahead was no more. At last they could move up without receiving massive casualties. The Corporal steadied himself and gripped his pistol in an orange glow coming from his horn.
“ARTILLERY DOWN!” Shouted a riflepony.
“FIX BAYONETS!” He waited and watched as several hundred ponies attached 11 inch long blades to the rifles. “MOVE UP! OVER THE LINE! GO GO GO!” He took the whistle around his neck and shoved it in his lips, blowing furiously.
The signal was repeated throughout the trench, other officers getting the hint that it was time to move up.
With a resounding and nearly deafening chant, the ponies surged forward and out the trench by the thousands. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” It wasn’t a scream of terror, but a scream of joy. A scream of patriotism. A scream of unity. A scream of revenge.
The Corporal, or Corporal Iron Battery, nearly flew out of the trench and galloped forward as hard as he could. Rifle shots could be heard as his comrades around him were downed and picked off, but it wasn’t enough. Without the machine guns, the Gryphons were nothing.
He hopped over a crater at full speed, briefly looking at it and finding nothing but the remains of what looked like a machine gun. He smiled and muttered to himself. “Fine bucking job, Clear Shot.”
After dodging countless mines and barbed wire, they finally made it into the trench. Ponies poured in by the hundreds, if not the thousands, completely outnumbering the Gryphons. Frantic whistles and screams of agony sounded all around him as he jumped into the fray, red colored mud splashing all around him. Some ponies had run the Gryphons completely through, bayonets simply sticking out the other side of their heads as the ponies found it easier to just keep the rifle.
The Corporal felt a sharp pain hit his head as he was knocked on his side. He opened his eyes just in time to see a very angry and sad Gryphon preparing to whack his head off with a shovel, but he rolled away. The Gryphon’s shovel sticking into the mud. Said Gryphon screeched in anger and turned to face him, but the Corporal had already collected his pistol. The screech turned into a whimper, and then nothing as Corporal Iron Battery made another hole in the Gryphon’s skull.
He looked around and watched as the fighting all but died out, leaving the Pony’s as the clear victor. The Corporal sighed, knowing they’d have to fight their way through more trenches yet, and raised his whistle once more. He blew on it in sharp bursts, and soon enough the much more heavy machine gun crews joined them in the trench.
“ALRIGHT LISTEN UP! If Recon is correct, and usually they are, then we still have to capture the Gryphonian town called ‘Beaksburg’! If you’re wounded, get a medic to patch you up and follow with, if you have any major or crippling wounds, go to a medic and get it sorted out!” The ponies around him began shifting about as they checked for wounds, the uninjured simply grouped around him.
In truth. The Corporal did not enjoy war. The Corporal did not enjoy killing. Corporal Iron Battery wanted the war to be over, and he wanted to be with his family again.