The smoking chamber of a bolt-action rifle as it ejected a spent brass case, one of too many to count filled the air, as a man in low ranked military uniform ensured another round was seated before aiming down the weapon in his hand and squeezing the trigger again.
Squeezing wasn't quite the right word, panic, adrenaline, and excitement flooded the blood stream as bullets whipped past his body and shredded he men behind them, the sanguine liquid of life now ripped from its grace and future poured out on the dirt beneath their freshly rotting corpse something barely worth mentioning.
Such a scene was common, far too common, far too tiresome to even think about in the Balkans. Especially here, and now in the interwar era. Yet the young man, the boy really, hardly even an adult, perhaps even younger than one would expect by the age on his face, fired another thunderous shot downrange towards the machine gun nest, and the men within it who had killed his comrade just moments before.
