[REMASTERED] - Love on a Battlefield - (Walt x Male!Reader)

Chapter Five: April 22nd, 1915

It had been a few weeks since you'd gotten to the front. The Germans had attacked your lines. You and the others had mainly taken up a defensive line. You were dug in deep. You, your English allies, and the French, who had also been joined by Belgian forces. You were a very ragtag group, barely attached to any other groups. Many of your allies had been killed, so you had tied together into a tightknit little group of different nationalities.

Your group was odd. You had a few..

Emile Chaillon, an older Frenchman who had been forcefully drafted into the war. He had a daughter and granddaughter at home, waiting for their return, as well as a German son-in-law who had been forcefully sent back to Germany..

Freddie. You didn't know their last name. He was American, like you. He joined the French Foreign Legion to fight. He didn't really say why, though you did put together that he had a wife tragically taken from him somehow..

You had Louis, pronounced Loo-ee. A Belgian who wished to be a musician or a painter when the war ended. He had a wife and two young boys, who had fled to neutral Sweden to escape from the Germans. They were safe with Swedish relatives..

As for you? Well, you were [Y/N] [L/N]. You were an American, fighting for the British, alongside Frenchmen and Belgians. You were too young to have a wife or children. Hell, you lied about your age to get here in the first damn place.

However, with all of the bloodshed you'd dealt with, you were regretting a lot of your decisions. You could have saved up and gone back to America. You could have been truthful about your age and stayed in England and just kept your job as a butcher. But, no. You wanted to be a hero. You wanted to fight for a country fit for heroes. 

You were in Belgium, near the town of Ypres.. You'd been there for a while now. It was April now. Late April. 

Then, out of nowhere, it happened. You smelled an odd scent. Then, you noticed an odd cloud. It clung to the ground. Then, you noticed it.. People closer were coughing. They were grabbing at their throats. You were witnessing the first use of Fritz Haber's toxic gas. "RUN!" cried Freddie. You didn't need to be told twice. People were coughing up blood after touching that gas.

You ran. Emile ran. Freddie ran. You had no idea where Louis went.

You weren't sure how far you ran, or how fast you'd gone. All you know is that you were sure you had managed to evade that deadly cloud. That toxic mist. The wind seemed to change, blowing the thick mist away, at least from your lines..

And you saw it..

The dead, and the dying, coughing up blood and pieces of lung..

Amongst the dead laid some faces you recognized. Some of them, you'd served alongside for months now..

The Germans had deployed the use of a new weapon, and you had witnessed it..

You had witnessed the birth of chemical warfare.. and you were horrified..