Chapter 5

"My names Aurel, Aurel Sitz."

——

After introducing himself and changing into his uniform, a faded gray German WW1 infantry gear with black boots, grey pants, and a grey vest without rank as he was currently a private.

Walking out of the changing room and heading out of the barracks while saying his greetings to the men who gave him a hand earlier and proceeded to venture out and look for a place to eat.

Asking around a bit, Aurel managed to find a cafeteria with men with hunched backs eating what looked like grub.

Aurel himself got a tray and got some food, of what looked to be bread with black wriggly dots on it and very lumpy and suspicious meat." At this point id eat dirt, might as well chao down with what's available" Aurel thought as he walked to an available seat in one of the rows of long tables in the cafetería. Grabbing his fork and eating a mouthful of the meat, he had to force himself to swallow it, it had the texture of a rubber tire and the taste was so bland he wondered if it was actually a tire and not edible food. Setting down his fork and grabbing the bread he had a much better time, as it was only stale but still had some decent taste.

Munching the loaf of bread in moments, he sighed as his stomach seemed satisfied and got up to throw out his left over meat. "Hold up!" Aurel heard and turned to his right. A skinny kid with shaggy brown hair a loose uniform barely keeping itself together grabbed his sleeve. "If your not gunna eat it, you can give it to me." The kid said while pointing to Aurels unfinished food. "Ah, yeah sure help yourself kid" Aurel said handing him his plate while asking"How can you bring yourself to eat it?" The kid proceeded to look at him like he was on something"With the way they've been rationing our meals, we'll be eating our boots by next year!" The kid said while spittle flew out of his mouth as he ate the meat like it was the tastiest meal he'd ever had." Plus, training is tough and I hear when we get relocated to the front they'll feed us dog food instead so us boys are always scavenging" the kid said while nodding to himself sagely."Uh hu,When will we be sent to the front? Also what's this war all about?" Aurel asked nonchalantly, trining not to draw much attention to his odd question.

The skinny kid looked at him like he was an alien from mars."Us freshies will be sent to the front in 6 weeks. As for the second question, have you been living under a rock! The wars been going on for 3 years!" The kid exclaimed with food spitting all over the place. "Calm down kid."Aurel said while wiping food off his clothes. "Cough, my bad, the names Kuno ,yours?" He asked"Aurel" he said with a nod.

"I've been living out in the sticks and only just came out to civilization and joined the army straightaway, so I'm not familiar with the war situation" Aurel said with a nervous chuckle hoping his bs story will pull through on some naive kid.

"Hmm nice to meetcha, as for your question on the war, from what I've heard and seen on the papers it began when the Federation invaded our allies, the Grand Duchy of Dacia. Then we declared war on the Federation which resulted in us going to war with the republic as the republic and federation are close allies." Kuno said while staring into the distance trying to seem wise and knowledgeable but only coming of as amusing to Aurel." And there's all sorts of other fronts I don't even know about! The wars been going on for years and we've been at a stale mate with the damn Republic for almost the whole war, Though I hear it's going better in the east from the word of mouth..." Kuno said with a sigh and then quickly reassuming his scholarly impression. " Alas, our glorious Empire seems to be in a pinch as our food and supplies have been drastically reduced lately and talk is that the war might end by next Christmas" Aurel nodded while taking this in. From what he could understand he was in a parallel dimension with a similar situation in ww1 in his previous world but different names to countries and possibly geography." Thanks for the meat! I have to report back to my company, see ya around Aurel" Kano says while jogging off. "See ya" Aurel replied while walking back to his barracks.

The cogs in his mind whirring fast and plans moving into place as he made his decision on how to survive in this harsh world.