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Disclaimer: The following is a fictional portrayal of American and European army units engaged in a battalion level engagement along the French and German border. The story aims to be as realistic as possible in terms of strategy, protocols, and equipment used. There is also hardcore amounts of violence used to portray the grisly reality of modern warfare in a wintertime environment. Additionally, this story does not aim to accurately portray the socio-political events leading up the conflict, but merely to render a thought provoking look at war itself amidst Western civilization's most cherished holiday. Enjoy.

Note: Hyperlinked text leads to articles regarding the equipment mentioned for those unfamiliar with the subject of mechanized warfare. Certain vehicles and weapons mentioned are fictitious in nature due to the story taking place in 2025. These are meant to represent logical advancements in that weapon's technology that will theoretically become available in the next twelve years. Clicking on the hyperlinks is not necessary to understand the story, as they are simply there to aid those who enjoy the technical aspects of things.

Unofficial Theme Song

Background:

2014 - European Union faces widespread economic crisis as France declares bankruptcy along with Greece, Italy, Spain, and Ireland.  Hyper-inflation devalues the Euro to nearly a third of its original worth. Crippling debt in America causes similar economic meltdown for the U.S.A.

2015 - Riots unfurl across western Europe as food prices surge and unemployment numbers climb. Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom withdraw from European Union and switch their currency back to the Deutche Marks and Pounds in an attempt to curb inflation in their economies.

2016 - National Socialist Party gains majority seats in Greek Parliament as unemployment hits 14.5% and the national debt climbs to nearly 1.5 times its GDP.

2017 - United States slowly begins economic recovery along with Germany and the U.K.  Many European states still fighting stagnant economies and shrinking GDPs.

2018 - National Socialists gain power in France amid massive riots in Paris, Nice, Orleans, and Brest. Little resistance is put up as martial law is put in effect to quell the country. Similar incidents occur over the year in Spain and Italy.

2019 - As Germany's economy begins to fully recovery, many still struggling nations invite Germany to return to the EU. Fearing that they will be forced to bailout the failing economies of multiple nations, German parliament declines and instead enters a new trade agreement with Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the U.K. and the United States.

Socialist leaders place blame on Germany for their country's failing economies, and soon feelings of animosity begin to grow across Europe.

2020 - France, Spain, Italy, and Greece form the Peoples Front for Liberated Europe, a socialist movement working under the guise of creating equal opportunity for the working people of Europe. PFLE leaders continue to disparage the nations that have left the EU, claiming they are leaving their brethren to die in the cold.

2022 - After nearly ten years of rising poverty, France's economy shows signs of strengthening amid leaders nationalizing the country's industrial and agricultural sectors. PFLE leaders in France remind the people of Germany's past rivalries with them, from the Napoleonic wars to World War II. A sense of nationalism sweeps France as the nation makes it its mission to surpass Germany's economic success.

2023 - Nexter, France's primary military supplier is ordered to increase production of all weapons, including the new Bonaparte main battle tank. Germany, likewise, increases its military spending by 30 billion dollars as a precaution, nearly doubling the nation's defense budget.

2025 - Tensions mount after a French airliner is reportedly shot down by the German Luftwaffe without provocation. Germany denies involvement. A second attack, a bomb planted in a bank in Orleans, kills eighty people and injures over a hundred. The terrorists are reported to be Jewish Zionists with German citizenship, but before their identities can be confirmed a police assault kills them in their home. Their bodies are kept hidden to preserve their integrity, but no further information is given. As winter nears, the PFLE demand compensation from Germany for the deaths of France's people. Germany's leaders counter by stating that their nation had no involvement in either attack, and accuse the PFLE of inciting violence. Diplomatic measures break down, and on December 15th, 2025, a formal declaration of war is declared in Paris, signed by the governments of Spain, Greece, and France. Italy, however, abstains due to the nation's reluctance to enter another world war. For a week, all is quiet. However, on the morning of December 24th satellites observe French military units mobilizing along the German border, causing Germany and the U.S.'s European expeditionary forces to mobilize at once to meet the threat. 

DATE- December 24th, 2025

OPERATION PANTHER SHIELD

Mission: PFLE forces have crossed the Rheine and are pushing into Germany towards the city of Offenburg. Advance to grid 48.5 North 7.9907 East and link up with 1st company of German Panzerbataillon 203. Form defensive perimeter around Offenburg and counter enemy assault.

Troops to be Deployed:

U.S. Army 5th Corps 172nd Infantry Brigade

66th Armored Battalion

1st Battalion 2nd Infantry Regiment

1st Battalion 77th Field Artillery Regiment

German Army 1st Panzer Division 21st Armored Brigade

Panzerbataillon 203 - Tank Battalion 203

Panzergrenadierbataillon 212 - Mechanized Infantry Battalion 212

Panzerartilleriebataillon 215 - Armored Artillery Battalion 215

Forward Operating Base "Echo Nine" - 10:35 P.M.

Despite being an arctic fox, Captain Mark Wells hated the cold. Germany was normally warm enough most of the year, but he always hated it in winter time. The thirty-five year old Virginia native bitterly trudged outside, having just retrieved his helmet and other combat gear from his locker. Ten minutes before he and the other officers in his unit had been huddled around the 70" LCD television in the officer's lounge watching football highlights from the Eagles-Cowboys game that had played earlier that day. Then the alarm went off, and everyone sprang into action, rushing to their assigned briefing area where they were informed the PFLE were making their move.

Already two dozen French tanks had crossed the border into Germany, near Offenburg, a small city of about 50,000 people only a mile from Rheine River that separated France and Germany. Word was coming down that French tanks were rolling over the border at four separate locations, along with over two hundred aircraft and thousands of infantry. Both German and American commanders were scrambling to organize an effective counterattack that wouldn't leave their lines stretched too thin, lest the PFLE manage to break through and set up a defensive line along their newly gained ground.

After getting his orders, Captain Wells threw on his ACU digital camo jacket and rushed into the cold night air. The base glowed with festive Christmas lights hung from the dozens of trailers and other fiberglass temporary buildings that made up the base. Wells smirked at this, since it had been the idea of the still teenage soldiers fresh out of basic training to decorate the base despite being in the middle of a warzone. Deep down, they were still kids inside and like any kid they loved the holidays. Wells thought of his own two kids back home at his sister's house in Texas. I bet it's nice and warm there, he pondered while sauntering into the vehicle parking lot and stepping up to his M1A3 tank. His crew was already getting the vehicle prepared, the driver already warming up the engine while the gunner assisted a mechanic in topping off the gas tank with a fresh load of chemically treated diesel that wouldn't freeze solid in the engine block.

"Thomas, we good to go yet?" Wells asked as he climbed atop the left tread and onto the turret.

"Two minutes sir, Matt's doing a final engine check," the gunner, a black cat with lime green eyes, replied as gestured towards the tank's driver seat.

All around them the base hummed with activity as the other tanks in 66th Battalion revved up their engines and began waiting for the order to move out. Wells was in command of A Company, which contained four platoons of four M1A3 Abrams tanks each. The commanders of the subordinate platoons sat atop their turrets watching for Wells to mount his seat in the commander hatch and signal for them to get going. Overhead a flight of AH-64 gunships passed by, flying low at two hundred feet in the "nap of the earth," allowing them to stay hidden from enemy radar long enough to sneak up on any advancing French tank columns. The thunderous pounding from their rotor blades was almost deafening, making Wells sigh with relief when they passed out of earshot. At least the next people to hear them would be the Nazi bastards that were ruining his holiday.

"Alright, all lights are green! We're good to go, sir," Well's driver reported from his seat at the front.

Wells didn't reply, choosing to hop into his seat instead and tune in to his company's combat radio channel. Calmly, he ordered everyone to form up on him as his tank led the way out of the vehicle park and onto a nearby road. A minute later they were speeding at over eighty-kilometers an hour down the two lane highway in a neat column formation. The horizon was mostly black stretches of forest covered hills, with the occasional flat grassy plain in between. And of course, four miles dead ahead lay Offenburg, the city a series of black silhouettes with golden windows dotting them. Wells rather liked the town; it reminded him of the small community he had grown up in back in southern Virginia as a kid. No huge skyscrapers here, hardly any of the buildings were over four stories tall.  The whole place felt friendly and inviting, even as blue lights from police cars dotted the roads and sirens called for people to black out their lights to avoid any potential air strikes.

The wind picked up, a light breeze from the east that seemed to push Wells and his tanks forward into battle.  Snow came next, adding another layer of white fluff to the already well coated grass and trees. It was a little surreal, Wells thought, the biggest holiday of Western civilization and here he was charging into a mosh pit riding atop a steal beast in woodland camouflage. The whole thing seemed like something he'd role-played in his backyard as a pup with his friends, and now he was doing it for real so those same friends could enjoy their holiday in peace. Wells was interrupted from his daydream as his earpiece crackled with radio chatter from the other tanks. Shaking his head, he decided he'd had enough of the cold and "buttoned up," closing the hatch over his seat and locking it in place to keep enemy infantry from pulling it open and tossing in a frag grenade stocking stuffer. 

Looking at his digitally displayed command map, Wells saw that his company was almost in position. The German tanks they were to be hooking up with should be nearby, and after browsing through the list of radio channels he found the one for Tank Battalion 203.

"This is Captain Wells, A Company 66th Battalion, does anyone read me, over?"

"Bejahend Hauptmann, wir hören dich laut und deutlich," came the reply.

"Uhh, sprechen Englisch, over?" Wells asked, trying his best to remember his German. He hadn't been posted her in the last five years and he was too rusty to fluently communicate with it in the heat of battle.

"Ja, yes Captain, I do. This is Oberleutnant Josef Fleischer, Bravo Company commander. I was told to meet with the Americans and head west to flank the road into town," the German tanker replied.

"Same here, I'm just glad your English is better than my German," Wells joked.

"When this is over you'll be saying that about our beer too," Fleischer warmly cracked back.

Wells chuckled at that, mainly because he didn't drink alcohol on account of his wife being a Mormon. "Alright, let's focus. Lieutenant, do me a favor and have your entire company tune in with mine so we can coordinate better."

Fleischer did as asked and a minute later his units were sitting in front of a cluster of trees waiting for Wells to lead the way. The German company was slightly smaller, with only twelve Leopard 3 tanks instead of sixteen. However, they were also backed with four Puma IFVs carrying half a platoon of infantry from Mech. Infantry Battalion 212. A couple of minutes later they were perched one and a half kilometers north of Offenburg in a line abreast formation overlooking the road into town. The French would have to cross a narrow bridge to get into Germany, thus bottle necking their advance and allowing the allied forces to pound them with overwhelming force each time the French tried to rush across. At least, that was the plan.

After waiting in position for five minutes with no signs of the enemy, Wells began to wonder if this was all some sort of big misunderstanding. Looking through his turret's periscope, he flicked on the infrared lens and peered over the Rheine, looking for the telltale heat signatures of enemy tanks that glowed white against the grainy green landscape. Nothing. Still not convinced, Wells unbuttoned his hatch and stood up to use his binoculars. Again, not a sign of life, just the sound of two dozen tank engines idling in the cold, snow filled night.

"Command, this is Yankee One actual, I'm in position but I've got no signs of the enemy, how copy?"

Wells earphones crackled in response a few seconds later, "Yankee 1, this is Watchtower Two, roger that. Satellites are having trouble penetrating the cloud cover in your sector and all available UAV recon drones are committed further north. We've got a major French assault about twenty-five clicks north of you  that's got most of our air support tied up. Just keep an out, the last available satellite sweep showed at least two regiments of enemy armor mobilizing in your area. Over and out."

"Great," Wells grumbled as he set his binoculars down and looked over at his German counterpart sitting in the tank next to his.

Wells could see that Fleischer was a German Shepherd, not surprising considering the country he was from. He was young too, only about twenty-six, although in the dim night it was hard to tell exactly. Most of the current light came from street lamps and empty buildings whose lights ran on timers and thus hadn't shut off for the blackout. In fact many buildings were still lit up, probably because their owners were down at the local schnitzel house enjoying a proper holiday. And yet, Wells mused, here he was, trapped in a cold titanium coffin packed full of cheap diesel and high explosive waiting for an enemy that wasn't there.

ZZZWWWOOOOSH! CRACK-BOOOOM!

Wells nearly jumped out of his fur as the M1A3 to his left was struck by what had looked like a bolt of lightning, but in reality had been a high velocity 120mm sabot round from an old Leclerc tank. The M1A3's engine was burning, and already most of its crew had grabbed their M-4A2s from the arms locker and abandoned the tank to go take cover in the woods. A second shell exploded ten feet behind Wells' tank, kicking up a wall of snow and dirt that pelted him in large icy chunks.

"SHIT! Watch it boys, they're behind us!" Wells yelled as he hurriedly buttoned himself back in and started barking orders. "Jonesy get this hunk scrap turned around or we're all dead! All units, all units, French forces behind us, turn about 180 degrees and engage on sight!"

"Fick mich!" a German tank commander yelled over the radio as his Leopard took a hit and had a large chunk of its turret blown off. ""Friß das, du Hund. FEUER!""

The silence that surrounded the tanks was immediately shattered as the damaged tank answered its assailants with a hot 120mm round of its own. In a matter of seconds, both companies of American and German tanks had flipped around in the snow, marring the once untouched landscape with tread marks and unshapely heaps of slush. The Puma IFVs backed away into the city to escape any chance of getting blown to bits in by the French blitzkrieg.

"Jesus, how many of them are there?!?" yelled an American tank commander.

"This isn't kindergarten Murdock, don't count them, kill them!" Wells yelled back while looking real time combat display that showed him what his gunner was looking at.

Already Thomas the gunner had lined up a French Leclerc tank and prepared to fire.

"Target, tank dead ahead," he shouted back to Wells who sat a mere ten inches behind him.

"FIRE!"

"On the way!"

KRAK-BOWM!

Immediately Wells' ears began to ring from the concussion of the M1A3's massive gun. He'd accidently left one of the window ports open on the hatch, and the sound had flooded his portion of the turret like a tidal wave. He shook off the pain in time to notice the shell had hit its target on the mark, punching a hole clean through the Leclerc's turret, killing both the gunner and the commander. The driver put the tank in reverse and deployed the smoke grenade launchers, shrouding the damaged beast in hot, white smoke as it limped away.

"Target!" Wells said to his gunner as his loader slammed a fresh shell into place.

"Sabot up!" the loader called as he finished locking the breach on the M1A3's 120mm main gun.

Thomas had already picked out a new target, this one a new Bonaparte tank that sported improved armor and a new 137mm high velocity rifled cannon specifically designed to rip through titanium armor.

"Tank! Ten o'clock, two thousand meters!" he called as he swung the turret into position and placed his gunsight square on the tank's turret.

"Fire!"

"On the way!"

BLAM!

Just as Thomas depressed the trigger an enemy shell struck three feet to their left side, the blast rocking the tank enough to offset their shot by half a degree. Wells watched his digital gunsight display to see their shell pass the Bonaparte's turret and explode behind it.

"Over! Reengage, reengage!" Wells frantically yelled as his loader rushed to slam a new round into the gun.

"Sabot up!"

"FI-"

CRASH-BOOM!

Wells jerked in his seat as he felt an enemy shell bounce off their hull. Fortunately, it struck their heavily armored front, damaging only the thick layer of composite armor protecting their driver. Nevertheless, the impact jarred everyone inside for a split second as they now rushed to collect their thoughts and prepare to hit back. Thomas realigned his shot and fired, sending another shell downrange and straight into the Bonaparte's left track. The tank spun to the side as it came to a halt, only to be struck twice more as a pair of Leopards sent a coup de grace in the form of two 120mm shells. The Bonaparte's ammunition magazine detonated within its hull, blowing the turret clean off the tank's body as a volcano of orange fire belched from its battered hull.

"Target destroyed, good shot Thomas," Wells lauded as he searched for a new target.

Already over a dozen French tanks sat burning in the snow covered field before them, although there were at least twenty more approaching fast. Even worse, three of Wells' fellow Abrams tanks had been either disabled or completely destroyed, and nearly half of the German Leopards had suffered a hit and were struggling to stay operational. Two of them had already lost their hydraulics and couldn't move their turrets without the assistance of the gunner's emergency hand cranks. 

"Sabot up!"

Wells struggled to find a new target, as the French had just deployed smoke grenades and were falling back to regroup. He breathed a sigh of relief as he took a moment to survey the dead enemy tanks. Most of them were the older Leclercs; expendable and obsolete by today's standards. Still, they were armed with the same M256 cannon his tank had, so they were by no means any less lethal than he was.

"Alright, everyone take a minute to check your rig and make sure you can still fight. I want status reports from everyone in a minute," Wells ordered. "They're likely regrouping to flank us, so keep scanning the area."

"How in the hell'd they get behind us like that sir?" asked one of the tanks from 2nd Platoon.

"They likely set up a mobile bridge at a thin point in the river," Wells replied. "We don't have the manpower to watch the whole thing."

As Wells waited to hear from the rest of his men he decided to get a better look and unbuttoned his hatch to stand up. The smoke clouds still hung heavy across the snowy fields, almost looking like billowing tufts of cotton candy as the wind slowly pushed them west towards the river. Wells scanned to the east, where a large patch of trees provided excellent cover for the French to advance from. He doubted they'd gone back across the river, as that would leave them vulnerable to a counter attack. No, they had simply probed the American defenses and now were ready to move in for the kill, preferably from the side. Wells tried to decide what his next move should be, but an incessant ringing in his ears made it hard to think. His gloved fingers didn't make it any easier to scratch inside, when he noticed the ringing's tone got much deeper...

SSSHHHHHOOOOOWSH! KA-BOOOOM!

"JESUS, FUCK!" Thomas yelled from inside the tank as an artillery shell landed twenty feet in front of them.

In an instant the air filled with the shrill calls of whistling artillery shells raining upon them in an explosive deluge. The French had over a dozen guns aimed at this location, each one firing an at all-out bombardment rate of one shot every five seconds. Wells didn't care he'd dropped his binoculars off the side of the turret as he yanked the hatch down just in time to keep large chunk of shrapnel from taking his head off. More shrapnel bounced off the tank's hull, sounding as if it were raining hail outside.

"THEY GOT US ZEROED! Fall back, fall back!" Wells screamed into the radio as he and the other tanks struggled to retreat before an artillery shell knocked one of them out.

Already the artillery had claimed one of the Leopards, and before long another Abrams took a hit straight to the engine block and skidded to a halt, crippled and immobile. The crew hastily gathered their weapons and then used the emergency escape hatch to climb out the bottom and hide until the shelling stopped.

"Sir, they're ripping us to shreds out here!" came a frightened shout over the radio from a damaged M1A3.

"Command, this is Yankee One actual, enemy artillery are cutting us up, we need immediate counter-bombardment against their gun positions NOW!" Wells screamed into the command channel.

"Affirmative Yankee One, we're working on it," came a seemingly callous reply.

Unbeknownst to Wells, his superiors were already ordering an artillery strike against the French Army's howitzer positions. A single MQ-9 Reaper UAV silently hovered above the battlefield at 5,000 feet, scanning the entire area with a vast array of radars and infrared sensors that automatically updated the main U.S. headquarters on the movements of enemy troops and equipment. Better yet, it was stealth and completely invisible to the French Air Force's ground control radars that were already targeting a flight of American helicopters with surface to air missiles. Little did they know that an even bigger threat loomed a mile above them.

The MQ-9 wasn't quite high enough to spot the French artillery on its own, as they were hiding in a valley behind an embankment and using the terrain to mask themselves from American tanks. However, the shells they launched were far from invisible, and the MQ-9 easily picked them up with its radars. In only 2.2 seconds it had recorded the launch trajectory of the shells and calculated their parabolic arc to determine within a two meter distance of where the French artillery stood. Four seconds later it forwarded this information back to FOB "Echo Nine" and the artillery crews there.

"Coordinates locked on, prepare for counter-bombardment!" yelled a young wolf Lieutenant to the crews of a trio of M270 MLRS rocket artillery vehicles.

Each M270 raised up their missile racks, their targeting computers already programmed to launch a pair of M26 rockets from each launcher's supply of twelve. Everyone nearby took cover as the warning siren screeched from top of the lead M270, and then a tearing roar filled the night as the first M26 was ignited and fired into the sky. Five more rockets quickly followed, all heading for the secluded camp where a dozen French 155mm Howitzers sat firing upon American and German troops.

Twenty kilometers away, the French crews happily slapping shells into their 155mm TRF1 towed Howitzers joked amongst themselves about how they would spend Christmas in Germany. For them, the war was to be fought a safe distance away from the front lines, their job simply to hurl explosives at the enemy without a chance of them being able to effectively counterattack.  Little did they know their commanders had underestimated the time it would take the Americans to calculate a counter-attack. The realization of this error would come shortly, heralded by the sound of a single loud crack overhead.

"Huh?" a gray furred chartreux cat grunted as he reached for another shell.

ZZZZWWOOOOSH! BABABABABABANG!

"MERDE!" he yelled as the northern half of their encampment filled with hundreds of small explosions, each leaving a meter wide crater in the ground. "Oh mon dieu! Descendre!  Descendre maintenant!"

Snow and ice pelted the faces of those dumb enough to stand and watch as four of the TRF1s were ripped apart by the hundreds of M77 submunitions released from each of the M26 rockets. These M77s in particular had been tipped with white phosphorus, causing them to burn through flesh and steel alike as they unrelentingly fell upon the helpless soldiers below. The chartreux sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him to a nearby trench and dove inside just as the second pair of M26 rockets arrived and blanketed his side of the base with liquid fire and red hot shrapnel. The Howitzer he'd been manning seconds before was hit a dozen times and exploded into to sky, the barrel flying nearly a hundred feet up and landing in a farmer's field half a kilometer away. Spare shells exploded in their magazines, transport trucks burned in place while the command tents collapsed in heaps of melted plastic and fabric.

An explosion followed by a guttural scream shook the chartreux to his nerves. For a moment he zoned out, his mind unable to comprehend what was going on around him as his ears rang from concussions of exploding munitions. A light impact on his helmet briefly snapped him from his daze. He peeked up over the edge of the trench to find the bombardment had ended as quickly as it began. The whole place was covered in small craters, fires burned from the ruins of the two large command tents and the hulks of the trucks used to pull the TRF1s. The TRF1s themselves were nowhere to be found, most of them having been blown apart as their ammunition stores detonated next to them.

Falling back into his trench, the chartreux noticed a severed arm and paw lying before him, the fur singed into ash and the fabric uniform melded to what flesh remained upon the bony appendage. He shrieked in terror and scurried away, only to back into a wolf's corpse missing both of its feet. A pool of blood had collected before the two stumps at the ends of his shins, the red liquid already scabbing over in the cold as the lupine warrior blankly stared ahead into the dirt with a frozen gaze. All the chartreux could do was shiver in terror and curl his knees to his chest as the moans of dozens of other wounded soldiers floated across the charred earth while a chorus of gunfire and death sang over the horizon towards Germany.

"Make it stop! Oh God in heaven make it stop for Christ's sake!"

Despite his terror, the chartreux inwardly laughed at the irony of praying to a god his country denied. He knew he was doomed, sent to die by some prick in a fancy suit with a cushy office in a high class district in Paris. That same prick was probably hosting a fancy party where he'd screw his secretary in a back room while his guests enjoyed plenty taxpayer funded delicacies. And yet here the chartreux sat alone in the freezing cold on Christmas Eve, surrounded by his dead friends while what little of his nineteen years of life flashed before his eyes. Quietly, he rocked himself into a slumber as he awaited another wave of rockets to fall and finish him off. Unbeknownst to him, the wait would span several hours till the following morning.

Meanwhile...

Wells didn't remember what happened as he awoke to being dragged through the snow by Thomas. Blinking to clear his vision, he saw his tank lay burning in front of him, and slowly it all came back to him. The artillery, the charge of French tanks, the sudden impact of a 155mm shell upon the front of his tank, the pressure of the impact crushing his driver into a red paste while blowing the barrel clean off the turret. From there it was all a blank, but he surmised that Thomas had survived and managed to drag the two of them out through the escape hatch before the leaking fuel caught fire and threatened to cook everyone. He didn't see their loader standing anywhere, leaving him to presume the worst.

"Ugh, Thomas let go! I'm up, I'm up," Wells grunted as he struggled to stand up.

"Ah thank fuck you're okay sir, we really took a hit there. Matt and Jerry both ate it, and I think I got a broken rib or two," Thomas said, his voice oddly pitched.

As Wells turned around, he saw that Thomas's nose was shattered, and blood trickled from his nostrils over his lips and down his chin.

"God damn it, Thomas forget your ribs, your face is a mess!"

"Don't I know it sir," the black feline nodded, "But we can worry about me having to pay for sex from now on later."

Wells shook his head and followed his gunner in retreat as they both ran for shelter in the nearby buildings of Offenburg. Their radios still worked, fortunately, and squawked heavily with traffic as reports came in of French troop transports crossing the bridge over the Rheine and heading for Offenburg's western district. Looking behind him, Wells saw dozens of burning tanks, some French, others German or American. To his left he noticed a trio of Leopard 3 tanks retreating into the city. Quickly he rushed to join them and a couple of minutes later he was standing in large intersection filled with two Leopards, an American Stryker IFV , and a mixture of American and German soldiers dressed in their respective camouflage patterns.

Before he could so much as introduce himself a shot rang out and a nearby store's front shattered in an explosion of brick and mortar. The soldiers scattered, most opting to run down side streets while a few kicked in the door of a nearby apartment block and rushed inside. Wells was too disoriented to think straight and followed a mixed squad of German and American grunts inside, Thomas sticking close behind him.

Once inside, a German corporal led the way to the third floor, the top of the building, and kicked in apartment number 3F's door. His entrance was met with a startled scream from a young vixen who was huddling with her wolf husband on a sofa in the living room. The corporal ordered both of them into the hallway as Wells and the others entered the apartment and took up positions around the windows, which didn't open and thus had to be broken with the butts of their rifles. Wells himself didn't have a weapon, as Thomas hadn't had time to grab an M4 for both of them as he was escaping from the tank. All Wells could do was watch and give orders as best he could.

Looking out from the windows, the soldiers had an excellent view of highway B33, the road the French forces would be driving down from the north. Their radios chattered with reports of a second wave of French troops arriving from the north, while a second force approached on highway L98 from the west to secure the nearby town of Schutterwald.  Wells didn't know how many American and German troops had garrisoned Offenburg, but he had a feeling they were going to be badly outnumbered.

The first wave of French troops approached on foot with a pair of VBCIs leading the way down the road. Wells covered his ears as the soldiers in the apartment started firing down on the enemy, the riflemen firing in single shots while an American soldier armed with an M240B let off rounds in two second bursts. Tracers zipped across the street like supersonic fireflies as bullets ricocheted off the pavement and armored hulls of the VBCIs. The French fired back without delay, their F90 rifles barking fiercely as the VBCI gunners scanned the windows and cut loose with their deadly 25mm cannons.

Wells watched in terror as a neighboring building was torn to shreds by armor piercing cannon fire, the hot white shells shredding the interior walls like tissue paper. However, before the gunners could adjust and target Wells' building, one of the Leopards crept out from its lair and laid a shell clean through the first VBCI. The armored beast belched fire as its fuel stores ignited upon impact, followed by the ammunition inside cooking off with a sound reminiscent of popcorn as the bullets bounced inside the still intact titanium hull. The second VBCI retreated in haste, leaving a squad of soldiers to fend for themselves as they huddled together behind the burning wreck of their transport. Those who were not put down by shots from above found themselves face to face with the Leopard as it callously circled behind the wrecked VBCI and gunned them down with its coaxial machinegun.

Then, without warning, a bright flash erupted from turret of the Leopard and in an instant the street echoed with the sound of a single cannon shot followed by the explosion of the Leopard's ammo stores, leaving nothing but a flaming wreck parked next to the destroyed VBCI. Everyone in the apartment gasped in shock, with many of the Germans cursing the sky as they watched the tank's commander open his hatch and try to crawl from the wreck while his burning uniform still clung to him. The chorus of machineguns and mortar shells seemed to fade into the background amid the young commander's agonized screams as his black silhouette leapt from the turret to the snow covered pavement and desperately attempted to extinguish himself. His strength lasted but a moment, cooked away as his life evaporated in a small cloud of black smoke that left nothing but a smoldering lump of charcoal gripping the pavement with boney, gnarled paws.

Those watching from the apartment remained silent, their mouths agape as they tried to process what they just saw. One soldier gagged and began to vomit out of disgust and fear, a pair of his comrades coming to his side as he sobbed uncontrollably between retches. The young otter was only twenty, a kid from Massachusetts who wanted to be like his big brother in the Marines now trapped in a frozen hell with an unrelenting foe barreling towards him. The thought of dying as the German tanker had was too much, and his nerves snapped like kindling being prepped for a bonfire.

"PANZER!" yelled a German fox to the dozen other men scattered about the apartment.

Wells snapped from his daze to see a lone Bonaparte tank slowly working its way down the road, no doubt the beast responsible for slaying the Leopard moments before.  The large tank was flanked by over fifty foot soldiers charging forth in a loose formation, with a VBCI and even more soldiers following a hundred meters behind. Many the soldiers with Wells began shooting down at their French adversaries, their opening shots catching them off guard as the Frenchmen ducked into open storefronts or down alleyways to avoid the hail of gunfire coming from straight ahead.

"What are you doing you idiots, that tank's gonna draw a bead on us!" Wells shouted as he desperately tried to get his men to cease firing.

It was too late; mere seconds after crying out to his men the Bonaparte's gunner had spotted the faint muzzle flashes from a machinegun and four assault rifles coming from an apartment's third floor. Without hesitation he launched a 137mm sabot round into the building's front, creating an open wound in the red brick and mortar walls. His shot went low, however, and only struck the second floor. Selecting a HEAT round for his next shot, the gunner waited for the tank's autoloader to finish inserting a new shell while hovering his gunsight over the center window.

"Chargé!" prompted the autoloader's computerized voice as it finished locking down the barrel.

The gunner depressed the trigger.

THUD-BOOM!

Wells had ordered everyone out into the hallway, but a lone German rifleman had not paid attention since he was used to receiving orders in his native tongue. It mattered not, the soldiers had bottlenecked at the door and half of them remained inside the living room as the Bonaparte's shell struck dead center upon the neighboring flat's window. Wells was knocked to the floor with five other soldiers piled around him, all grabbing their ears in pain from the sonic concussion nearly blowing out their ear drums with a 160 decibel blast. For a moment he had no idea what was going on, his vision blurred and a feeling of numbness overcame him as he lay prostrate upon the cold wooden floor.

While Wells was out of the fight at the moment, Josef was busy rallying his men and calling the joint U.S.-German headquarters and demanding they reinforce this section of the town before the French incursion was able to dig in and fully entrench itself. Josef had watched his executive officer's tank get blown to bits by the Bonaparte that was now shelling Wells position. Fortunately, the Bonaparte's gunner was attempting to save ammo and had not fired another shot, instead waiting for confirmation from his infantry support that his targets were indeed dead. Josef knew better than to take a Bonaparte head on, and instead ordered his driver to head down a neighboring street and circle behind a block of small stores and beer halls to come in from behind.

French infantry had spotted them as they rounded the corner, but it mattered not. Just as the Bonaparte's turret began to swivel around, Josef's tank laid a 120mm sabot round straight into the soft underbelly of the Bonaparte's engine block. Flames erupted like breath from a dragon, the massive tank crippled and bleeding fuel for the fires that began to spread around it. Amazingly, the turret still moved, albeit much slower as the gunner was using his manual hand cranks reserved for when the tank loses all power. Josef's gunner had been ready though, and six seconds after his first shot, he laid a final coup de grace upon the Bonaparte's turret, the shock alone killing the surviving crew with mercifully snapped necks that would prevent them from feeling the flames that began to cremate their corpses as the fire around the tank began to rage out of control.

Josef flinched as he felt a rocket impact his tank, likely Swedish made AT-4 since it didn't appear to do much damage. If it had been a larger rocket like a Javelin , he might have been dead. Not bothering to get his bearings, he hastily ordered his driver to get them back to Wells building, and thus the cover of infantry support, before any of the Frenchmen could immobilize them with a hit to their treads. Another rocket sailed just over their turret as the Leopard backed up in full reverse, crushing a BMW parked in the street in the process. Josef bit his lip and just prayed the unlucky owner had good insurance as they rushed back down the side street to safety.

Wells, in the meantime, had finally shaken himself awake. His body was covered in white dust from the destroyed drywall, and after rubbing his face he found over a dozen cuts and splinters scattered across his muzzle. He couldn't open his left eye either, as something had him and the skin around it had swelled shut. It didn't feel like the eyeball itself was damaged, but damn if his face didn't feel like a cubed steak right then. As his hearing came back, he realized he wasn't the only one who was hurt."

"AAAAARRGGH! Verdammte Scheiße,  mein Bein!" a lone German Shepherd howled from across the room before switching to English. "Oh Jesus, I think I'm gonna be sick..."

"Oh sweet God...MEDIC! Jenkins, where the fuck are you, we got a man down in here!" yelled an American ocelot as he rushed over to the wounded German and began dragging him away from the gaping hole in the side of the building to the relative safety of the hallway.

"NNNNRRRRGGHHH GOD! Quit it Amerikaner! Don't fucking touch me, " the G-Shep yelled in agony.

Wells had finally stood up and began to access the situation. He immediately noticed the wounded German, whose right leg was now dangling at a right angle at his mid-shin. He'd taken a large fragment from a 2x4 with such force that it had nearly snapped his leg in half. His calf muscle was the only thing keeping the bottom half of his leg attached, the shin itself was completely broken, part of it sickeningly prodding through his uniform. Even worse, he was spilling blood at a phenomenal rate, with nearly a third of a liter already smeared over the floor. Wells had to look away before his stomach turned itself inside out.

Just then the medic arrived, a tall wolf with a Texas accent and a thousand yard stare.  Despite being a twelve year veteran, he'd never seen combat this bad since a brief tour in Afghanistan. Even then, nothing had been as fucked up as the poor bastard's leg in front of him.

"Hernandez, quit moving him!" the medic shouted, "Jesus, hold him down and keep him from jerking around anymore than he has to."

The medic quickly retrieved a tourniquet rope from his kit and tied off the German's leg just below the knee, stopping the hemorrhaging in time to save the German from blood loss. However, as he went to fix a splint to help set the German's leg in place a burst of gunfire peppered the windows as French infantry began advancing on the apartment block.

"God damn it, I can't work with that! Brammer, give me some fuckin' coverin' fire will yah?" the medic cursed urgently at a Swedish Lapphund that was also his platoon's assault gunner.

Brammer was nick named "The Viking" in his platoon for both his Swedish heritage, and for his tendency to become insane with tenacity in combat, something he prided himself on. His grandfather had told him many stories as boy of how their family had many of the great "Berserker" warriors in their blood, the famed Viking soldiers who would whip themselves into a killing frenzy that could only be sated with blood. At that moment, Brammer had never been more certain the fire of his ancestors still burned in his blood. Only instead of hoisting a massive battle axe, he wielded a thirteen kilogram M240B machinegun and had wrapped himself with a pair of ammo belts to keep it fed. Without missing a beat he rushed past the medic and set his M240 on a window sill and cut loose.

"YEEEEAAAH! Eat it you fuckin' frogs! I'll rip out your living guts and strangle you with them motherfuckers!"

Wells had to cover his ears again as Brammer opened fire relentlessly, the thundering roar of the M240 reverberating down the entire street sending a whole French platoon ducking for cover lest they be mowed down like sheep to the slaughter. Brammer didn't stop though, he fired into buildings and through the fragile brick walls, the heavy 7.62mm bullets ripping apart anything that wasn't reinforced steel. One especially brave French wolf tried to charge the apartments while carrying a live grenade, hoping to land it in the enemy machinegun nest. Brammer saw him dart from cover though, and instantly laid into him with a twenty four round burst that ripped most of the meat off the wolf's legs while also making him drop his own grenade. Desperately he tried to crawl away, only to slip and slide on the icy pavement made even slicker by a fresh coating of his own blood. Amazingly, he survived still as his grenade rolled off and exploded in the street.

His guttural screams were not unheard by his comrades, and quickly they formulated a plan to save their fallen brother. Two soldiers armed with FN Minimis took positions and began returning fire on Brammer, the volume of their shots actually forcing him to duck inside as they relentlessly shredded the apartment building with lead. A French fox and hyena rushed out into the street and started trying to carry their friend back, but Brammer had switched to a different window and mercilessly laid into them. The hyena caught a round through his helmet and collapsed dead in the street, while the fox was struck once in the thigh and spun to fall on his back. Brammer saw him try to get up and cut loose again, ignoring the fusillade of rounds eviscerating the wall in front of him as bits of brick and wood bounced off his black fur.  A hail of bullets cut open the fox's body armor, along with his abdomen and his intestines literally poured out into street from the gaping wounds in his gut.

Brammer ducked again, looking back as everyone else finished clearing the room. Wells had armed himself with an M4 off a dead Labrador retriever whose body unceremoniously lay propped up in the hallway. The medic had managed to move the G-Shep to an interior apartment and was busy giving him a shot of morphine while another German soldier helped spread a blanket over him to prevent hypothermia and shock from setting in. Outside, the French machinegunners had both run out of ammo, causing a brief pause in gunfire as both sides took a moment to reload. Everything had gone strangely silent, save for a faint voice crying into the chill night air.

"Mère! Mère! Je ne veux pas mourir..."

Brammer felt his blood run cold. While he didn't speak French fluently, he knew enough to understand the fox lying in the street outside. Mama? Is that what he just said? Brammer shook his head and pushed any feelings of regret or hesitation aside. Looking at his ammo, he saw that his final belt had maybe ten rounds left before it was spent.

"Hey guys, I'm almost out up here! We got anything else I can use?" he shouted back to the others.  

A German soldier replied in English, telling him that there was an extra MG4 downstairs. Brammer quickly made his way down to the second floor. He was surprised at how many men were there, most of them American. Many of them had evidently been responding to Josef's call for reinforcements and had walked right into a major firefight with French infantry and tanks. Inside an interior apartment Brammer found the MG4 he was looking for, along with nearly a dozen wounded American and German soldiers lined up across the floor. Some merely had a gunshot wound to their leg or torso, while others were missing fingers and limbs. Brammer tried not to ponder the possibility that he'd be joining them soon as he hoisted the German made machinegun off the floor along with the spare ammo belts that had been laid next to it.

Meanwhile, out in the streets a French tiger was busy rallying his men. He was a captain, no different from Wells, and in charge of a whole company of infantry. He'd had to watch his men get slaughtered in a virtual meat grinder as they threw themselves against the American defenders only for German tanks to destroy their vehicles and leave them pinned down inside storefronts or derelict vehicles. The tiger's radio crackled with news of other units taking heavy causalities, but a glimmer of hope rose in his heart as a message arose from the second wave of mechanized infantry now heading down from the north. He knew if he could clear the entrenched defenders ahead, the second wave would smash through the allied lines and the town of Offenburg would fall by morning.

"Lieutenant! How many of us are left?" he yelled to a wolf beside him.

"I don't know sir, I know first platoon's down to 20%, and second and third platoons got chewed up when that tank took out the Bonaparte. I'd guess eighty men still standing, give or take," he replied.

"Start getting everyone ready, I want our assault gunners to suppress that building while we advance under the cover of smoke. We'll get in close and take them out hand to hand if we have to," the tiger ordered.

The minutes passed slowly as the tiger watched from his position inside the ruined front of a restaurant. Many of his men were too focused to listen to their radios, forcing his lieutenant to manually run and order them face to face. A few riflemen on the front lines fired sporadic shots at the Americans whenever the silhouette of one appeared in a window. The tiger knew in a few minutes the battle would be raging again as the remains of his company prepared to attack. Finally, his lieutenant returned, slightly out of breath, as he quickly leapt back into cover as a salvo of bullets skirted off the ground behind him.

"We're ready sir!" he reported. "Andre and Marc have their LMGs in place to cover us, while Serge and Pierre have smoke grenades ready to be deployed on your order."

"Alright, is everyone tuned back into my radio channel?"

"Affirmative sir, we're all here."

The tiger nodded and took another look at his adversaries' fortress. "All units fix bayonets!"

He waited as the soldiers around him pulled out their knives and hooked them under the barrels of their F90 rifles. This was going to get ugly, he knew.

"Deploy smoke!"

With that, Serge and Pierre tossed a quartette of smoke grenades into the street, the green canisters hissing as they released thick, billowing clouds of grey-white fog. The tiger yelled over the eager voices of his men, telling them to hold back and let the smoke fill out before advancing. Already the Americans were firing blindly into the cloud, hoping to get lucky and pick off any soldiers jumping the gun. Finally, the clouds of smoke reached the windows of the third floor as the whole street was covered in the ghostly plumes.

"Gunners ready? COVERING FIRE! First platoon advance on me! GO GO GO!"

"UUUUUURRRAAAAHHHHH!" the French soldiers cried in zealous unison as they bolted from cover into the deathly white fog that emptily promised to shield their advance.

Fire belched from the windows of the apartments as the American defenders heard the bloodthirsty cries of their charging enemy. Rifles chattered, machineguns thundered, and grenades echoed through the icy streets of Offenburg. The tiger rushed forward clutching his rifle close as he bravely led his men into the fires of hell. The smell of cordite and death hung heavy in the air, nearly as thick as the fog the French rushed into with nationalist fervor. To his left a fox was struck and fell to the ground, to his right a stray grenade tossed from above bounced off the street and exploded at knee height in front of a pair of soldiers, flinging them to their backs while severing the legs off one of them. Their guttural cries were heard but for a second before being drowned out by the pounding of nearly a hundred rifles as friend and foe exchanged hot death in equal measure.

Inside the apartments the American and German defenders began to drop like flies, the overwhelming volume of fire ripping apart their cover and exposing them to leaden fangs of the French guns. Wells flinched as he felt bullets impact the walls around him, only to take a breath and raise his rifle back to his shoulder and resume firing into the street.

It had taken only ten seconds for the first French soldiers to reach the doors of the apartment, but they had chosen to wait against the walls for their comrades to arrive. The tiger arrived and ordered his men to throw a grenade through the door and begin clearing the building. The instant the grenade detonated the French flooded the building with fervent energy, vengeance and victory hungering in their minds. In mere moments they had secured the first floor and were already flooding the second, surprising the defenders as an American leopard turned just in time to watch the French tiger jam his bayonet into his gut. His body armor did nothing to protect him, the ceramic plates designed to stop bullets, not archaic blades forged in fire.

The gunfire had all but stopped on the second floor as the American and French soldiers clashed together with tooth and nail. One American desperately cried for help to the men above as he was shot in the leg and fell to his knees, only to be finished off with a bayonet slice to his throat. An American husky rushed forward with his knife and jabbed it into a French wolf's back, only for the blade to snap off as the dead soldier collapsed in a heap on the floor. The wolf's comrades gave no quarter as they fired no fewer than fifty rounds into the husky's body, leaving him a pulpy, eviscerated mess on the floor. So many men now lay dead that one Frenchman actually slipped in the blood and fell down.

The French wormed their way down the halls of the second floor, kicking in doors and killing all inside. The tiger tried to get ahold of his men, but he soon found them to be unresponsive as they killed liked feral beasts. Fortunately the Germans had managed to smuggle the civilians out the back of the building, but their wounded remained as there was no way to evacuate them. A groggy feline lying next to his wounded compatriots tried to sit up as he heard gunfire coming from down the halls. He heard the sounds coming closer, followed by the shouting of voices until the door was violently smashed open and he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

"DIE AMERICAN!"

The agonized screams of the wounded fell on the tiger's ears like the cries of a lost child, and he rushed down the hall to the source of the noise. He found a scowling caracal standing over the corpses of a dozen men; all had clearly been wounded before his entrance. He callously spit on one as he reloaded his rifle.

"Franz, what the hell are you doing? We don't kill the wounded!" the tiger angrily shouted.

"They shot at us when we went for Pieter in the street, I'm just repaying them the same courtesy," the caracal bitterly replied as he pushed past the tiger into the hall.

Upstairs, Wells and Thomas had turned their attention to defending the stairwell from the French attackers. They had already expended their supply of grenades, namely by throwing them down the stairs into a crowd of French soldiers. They had killed or incapacitated nearly a dozen in this manner, but now the French threw grenades in return and began to force the Americans back into the hallway. Brammer lay prone in the hall and covered the length of it with his MG4. A pair of French riflemen turned the corner from the stairs only to be promptly cut to ribbons. Another squad advanced, this one throwing grenades to cover their advance. Brammer didn't flinch though as he kept up the fire and shredded another wave of Frenchmen, his focus too great to notice a grenade had rolled right next to him...

KA-BLAM!

Wells hit the floor as he felt the concussion of the grenade explode in the hall. He had taken cover in an apartment next to Brammer, and was firing from the doorway down at the French assault. Looking out he saw that the grenade had effectively ended Brammer's stalwart defense, the explosion scooping nearly half his face off as he lay motionless upon his machinegun. Wells turned to the men in the apartment. Only he, Thomas, Jenkins the medic, and two Germans remained standing. The wounded lay in a neighboring room across the hall with no one to guard them. Wells tried to push thoughts of his impending death from his mind and focused on the task at hand. Blindly he thrust his rifle into the hall and emptied the magazine, knowing full well he didn't need to aim to hit a Frenchmen rushing through the halls.

"Sir, get back from the door!" Thomas urged.

Thomas had run out of ammunition for his M4 and was left only with an M9 and his knife. Pressing himself against the wall, he waited by the door for the first French soldier to walk through. Naturally, the French threw a grenade first, but in their haste they had not noticed the wall opposite the door was missing from when it had been shelled by the Bonaparte earlier. Having thrown the grenade too hard, it simply passed through harmlessly and landed in the street where it nearly killed a French medic who was hastily patching up one the dozens of wounded that lay scattered about.

The French soldiers in the hall hadn't noticed the lack of an explosion and began to charge into the room. Thomas met the first one with his knife, angrily thrusting it through a wolf's chin and into the back of his throat. The wolf gagged in pain as he felt the blade pierce his bones and flesh, yet it failed to kill him as the knife's tip hadn't managed to sever the stem of his brain from his spine. Instead Thomas simply held him there, the knife now acting as a handle on the meat shield the wolf had become. Thomas raised his M9 and fired at the soldiers behind the wolf, hitting one in the face and another in the forehead before his magazine ran dry. Blood spilled into the wolf's mouth as he struggled to free himself from Thomas's knife, only for Thomas to yank it out and mercifully slash the wolf's neck open, ending his pain three seconds later.

"Jesus Christ..." Wells gasped as Thomas quickly tried to reload his pistol as more French soldiers gathered outside.

Suddenly, gunfire echoed down the halls, and the French soldiers began yelling in panic. Wells listened eagerly, all the while keeping his M4 ready in case another squad of French soldiers attempted to breach the room. The shouts of wounded men mixed with a chorus of gunfire emanating from the stairwell for the next several minutes. Wells heart began to flutter in anticipation as he heard the French retreat down the hall. More gunfire, only from one or two rifles this time.

"Hello? Amerikaner? Is anyone still here?" yelled a voice in a thick German accent.

"Oh thank god," Wells sighed to himself as he and the others looked at each other in unified relief.

The two Germans with Wells yelled back in their native tongue, and then signaled to Wells it was all clear. The group headed outside, passing over dozens of dead French, American, and German soldiers littering the halls and stairwells. Once on the street, they found that reinforcements had finally arrived, as nearly an entire company of German infantry proceeded to secure the surrounding buildings and streets. An American Stryker platoon arrived moments later, unloading additional soldiers to assist in bolstering the line. Wells noticed that twenty or so French soldiers had surrendered, likely after the Germans arrived and started mowing them down from behind. A squad of German riflemen eyed the prisoners carefully, never hesitating to punch a captive Frenchman in the back whenever he started to lower his paws from his helmet.

Wells shook his head as he studied them. Most were only boys, barely into their twenties all baring looks of utter terror as they contemplated their fate. They knew what the Germans were capable of, especially after the last war between their nations, and all feared a vengeful reprisal for their actions. Only one of them, a tiger, didn't appear to be scared. Instead of looking around at his captors, he simply stared into the pavement and blinked away an occasional tear. Out of simple curiosity Wells approached him and noticed the tiger was a fellow officer. The tiger looked up and met Wells' gaze, his face twisted into a disdained scowl.

Wells forced a smile and said, "I guess we just got lucky pal, sorry."

"No," the tiger hoarsely spat, "You are lucky American, because your country did not send you to die for nothing."

He nodded over where the Germans had organized the wounded and began triaging them for treatment. Jenkins was already there working alongside German and French medics. The French medics had voluntarily disarmed themselves and wore white pullovers with a red cross emblazoned upon them over their helmets, signifying their intent to only heal rather than harm. One of the American Stryker IFVs was a field ambulance model that had brought additional medics and even a pair of battlefield surgeons who were hastily trying to revive an American Rottweiler with CPR.

Civilian paramedics and local fire brigades had even been contacted by the German government and ordered into action. Soon, the street was lined with flashing lights from ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars attempting to cordon the area off from curious spectators who now eagerly poured out of their homes to witness the destruction they somehow endured. Wells simply watched the doctors do their work as the whole street looked strangely festive in its bath of red and blue light. However, the knot in his stomach killed any sense of holiday spirit that may have remained.

Due to the sheer volume of French casualties, Jenkins was instructed to assist the trio of French medics who desperately worked to save their fallen comrade's lives. They had already lined up nearly forty fallen soldiers in the street, some of them already dead, and were busy trying to identify the critical cases from those who could wait to be treated. A special tag was placed on their boots; red for critical and in need of immediate treatment, yellow for wounded but stable, and black for terminally wounded. Jenkins looked down at the bundle of tags in his paw and noticed he'd already used most of his black ones. Moving to the next soldier in line, he knelt down beside a white lynx who was visibly straining to breathe and shivering with cold despite the heavy blanket that had been put over him. Jenkins peeked under his blanket and saw the lynx's chest was nearly soaked through with blood. A French medic soon joined him and looked the lynx over as well. He and Jenkins exchanged forlorn glances as Jenkins placed a black tag across the lynx's boot. The lynx tried to sit up and look, only for the French medic to push him back down and chide him to rest.

"What-what...what color did he-he put?" the lynx shakily asked in fear.

"Yellow," the medic lied through a consoling smile, "You'll be fine mon ami."

The lynx clearly didn't believe him and started struggling to unbuckle his armor vest. The medic and Jenkins tried to stop him but he just swatted them away and reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a folded up piece of paper and shoved it at Jenkins before his last ounce of strength gave way. The lynx went limp and stared into the sky, his eyes empty as if they were looking a thousand miles away.  His mouth hung open slightly and a trickle of blood dribbled out the side down his neck, but he could do nothing to clear his throat as he slowly drowned in his own blood. Jenkins just shook his head and gently ran his fingers over the lynx's eyes to close them as the French medic pulled the blanket completely over the lynx's corpse.

Jenkins looked at the paper in his paws and unfurled it to find it was a printed out picture of a striking snow white vixen with flowing brunet hair and dark, dark eyes that shone seductively for the camera. Beside her face was a small hole where a bullet had passed through, as well as scabbed blood that tainted the image further. At the bottom of the page was an address scribbled in pen, and on the reverse side was a paragraph of text written in barely legible French. Jenkins didn't need a translator to know what it said though, and offered no resistance when the medic across from him reached for the letter and refolded it into his own pocket. Together, they refocused and moved on to treating the next patient.

December 25th, 2025 - 0650 Hours

Wells hadn't slept all night, leaving him feeling drained and utterly exhausted as he rode shotgun in a "Kodiak" JLTV heading across the river into France. The order had come down twenty minutes before that his unit was to advance into French territory and secure an abandoned French headquarters to retrieve any intelligence there before returning back to base. Confidentially Wells wanted to tell his divisional commander to go to hell, but like a good soldier he shut up and did as ordered. However, since he lost his tank in the battle he was forced to ride in shame with Thomas inside a JLTV while the other tankers in his company got to ride in style with their M1A3s.

The previous night's attacks left both sides drained and embittered, but neither was willing to come to the bargaining table. A ceasefire went into effect at 0600 hours that would likely last just long enough for everyone to count their dead and reorganize before another attack took place. Rumors circulated that the Spanish were already sending reinforcements into France, or that the British were preparing to enter the war and use their navy to blockade France's Atlantic ports. Wells didn't really care, he only wanted to go home and see his family to enjoy what was left of the year's holiday season.

Upon arriving at the designated coordinates, Wells' company found little in the way of a base. The ground was cratered in thousands of places, smoke still rose from the smoldering ruins of trucks and artillery pieces, and over a hundred charred bodies littered the ground.

"Oh dear God in Heaven," Wells gasped as he surveyed the carnage, "This must've been where we launched that counter bombardment."

Wells knew he had wished vengeance upon the artillery crews that had shelled him and his men, but he never figured it would look something like this. Thomas stood by his commander and tried not to retch as he noticed one body had been coated in white phosphorus across its abdomen and burned open to the point that nothing but a hollow, charcoal husk remained. Others were missing arms or legs that had been burned clean off their bodies. The snow was also visibly stained with crimson ice from those who had been caught in the explosions from the stored munitions. The only signs of life were the few black birds that were busy picking loose meat from the corpses that hadn't been burned too severely. Thomas finally lost it when he witnessed one such bird actually pluck an eyeball from a fox's skull.

"Oh fuck me, fuck this..." Thomas groaned as he tried to spit the putrid taste of bile from his lips, "Sir...what the hell happened here? Did we do this?"

"I'm afraid so," Wells solemnly replied, "White phosphorus is potent stuff."

"This is like something the Nazi's would've done though...isn't it? I mean I thought we were supposed to be the good guys in this?"

Wells shook his head and sighed. "We're all the good guys, even these poor bastards that never knew what kind of hell they were about to walk into."

"Huh? Sir, they were trying to kill us, remember?" Thomas asked skeptically.

"Only because their illustrious leaders back in Paris told them to. If it weren't for them, none of this would've happened, and we wouldn't be shipping hundreds of kids home back in a box to their parents."  

Thomas nodded and tried to muster the courage to look back out at the carnage before him.

"Why is it Thomas, that after 100,000,000 years of history all we've done is go from dashing each other's brains out with rocks to melting one another's faces off with incendiary artillery?" Wells mused aloud. "What does that say about us as a civilization? Are we just doomed to keep fighting war after war that in the end will do nothing to change the status quo?"

Thomas took a breath and quoted, "So long as there are men, there will be wars, sir. There's always going to be someone who rises to a position of power and uses his newfound authority to send others to do his bidding. It's just the way life is."

Wells sighed in consent. "All I know is if it was a cardinal law that those who make the call for war have to lead the charge into battle, we'd have had world peace a long time ago."

"One can always hope so, sir."

Just then, a soldier inspecting the trench shouted, "Sir! We found a live one!"

Wells and Thomas rushed over to find Jenkins and an ocelot attending to a shivering gray chartreux. The feline had apparently lost his winter coat and was suffering greatly from hypothermia and stage two frostbite. His lips were blue and coated with frost, and he couldn't unclasp his fingers from his arms. Jenkins had already wrapped him in a blanket, while the ocelot offered the chartreux a sip from his canteen. The feline cautiously accepted the drink, all the while scowling at the very men whom he held responsible for the deaths of his friends.

"How are you feeling?" Jenkins asked after the chartreux finished draining the canteen.

"Like shit," he growled back. "Don't placate me American, just shoot me already."

"We're don't shoot prisoners," Wells calmly replied. "We're not murderers."

"Oh yeah? What do you call this? Huh!? Go to hell Yankee pig!" the chartreux spat angrily.

"You first dickweed," the ocelot retorted while slapping the chartreux in the back of the head with his M4's barrel.

"Knock it off, Hector," Wells ordered sternly.

"I hope you all burn you imperialist dogs! God damn your mothers, fuck you all!" the chartreux said, his voice almost coming to a scream as it cracked on the tears running down his throat.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Frenchy," Jenkins said as he hoisted the chartreux to his feet and led him back to the other American soldiers to be properly secured and processed as a POW.

The chartreux continued to shout obscenities as he was dragged into the back of a Stryker and handcuffed before finally just breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably into his paws. Thomas and Wells simply looked on in remorseful pity.

"God, you'd think he wants us to kill him," Thomas observed.

"He probably does. After what he's been through, the things he's seen, I doubt he has any desire to live knowing those images will always haunt his memories and dreams," Wells replied.

"Hmm, yeah. And to think all this happened because of a few greedy pricks in a cushy office," Thomas said as they turned to leave and walk back for their Kodiak.

As Wells took his seat back in the Kodiak, his ears were met by Faith No More's rendition of "War Pigs" emanating from the driver's iPhone that say in a cup holder by the gear shift. For a moment Wells considered telling him to turn it off, but as he listened to the lyrics he decided against it and closed his eyes, sleep finding him quickly as Mike Patton's voice echoed in the back of his mind.

"Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor!"