Smil: from Cooking Class to Highland 876

My name is Smil, a common rifleman in the Second Company. Our company's cook, Old Lead, can make three hundred dishes using potatoes - because only potatoes are added to them. Our company commander, Hans, was the most loyal corrupt official in the empire. He withheld military pay and resold supplies, but he would buy beans for us out of his own pocket on the eve of the charge. I was carrying a dog tag that I forgot to turn in. It belonged to a comrade whose name I didn't even have time to ask. I thought I would die under the barbed wire fence on Highland 876, but I didn't. I made it home alive, only to find that my name preceded me on the death list. If you think this is a heroic epic, you're barking up the wrong tree. This is a story about potatoes, onions, black bread and mud - about ordinary people who died in the trenches and whose names only appeared in the corners of the death lists.