"Hell breaks loose" by Zen Karp (excerpt from H.L.I. and WWII)

As the wheat field came to an end, Private Jack Tufford and the rest of his section brought their weapons into their shoulders. They had so far made it through some of the enemy=s mortars, and were in good shape to close the last few hundred yards to Buron. Without stopping B and D Companies stepped out from the field of grain and it was at this moment the maelstrom of violence began.
From less than three hundred yards to their front erupted a hail of withering fire into the leading platoons. It was the anti-tank ditch, and from it the SS raked over their exposed enemy while the Canadians could do virtually nothing. The rich, life giving soil absorbed gallons of blood.
Through German sights, Pte. Jack Tufford was just one of the Canadians who dropped like a sack within seconds of the first rounds being fired. He had been shot once, and hit by mortar shrapnel which ripped through his chest. Like many with him that day, he was stopped well before reaching Buron.
Lt. Doug Barrie was also wounded here:
AThe noise and smells of the ground erupting was almost overpowering. Then there was the darkness; that is, your field of vision was badly limited with all the earth and shellfire. You could only see one or two persons about you. It=s a very small war from that point of view; and even more lonely for an officer leading troops...I never got beyond the anti-tank ditch. I was hit in the head with a piece of shrapnel and was out for twenty-four hours.@
The supporting tanks became immediate victims of well concealed guns, others stopped in their tracks upon driving into mines. Their machines became death traps where men incinerated inside the armor shells, the smoke from their burning flesh mingling with that of cooking off ammunition and gasoline.
But B and D Companies carried on. Crawling up inch by inch was done with the entire body pressed as low as possible into the earth. Most of them could be seen through German sights which meant life and death depended on being selected as a target or not. It was a matter of luck; you either got it or you didn’t.
Many of them kept moving after being hit by shrapnel or bullets, ignoring searing hot pain and the sight of their own wounds. Groups of three and four crawled up together until they were close enough to make an assault:
Reach into the pouch, yank out a grenade and pull the pin...one, two, three...then lob it into the trench...five, six...BANG...followed by a shower of debris... Get up…Go…Get in there!
Z
Lying on the trench floor, a stunned German teenager came to looking up at the blue cloudless sky framed by the walls of the trench; unable to hear or feel anything after the sharp explosion knocked him off his feet. He might have noticed that he was wounded before the oddly dressed man with a submachine-gun appeared and fired a long burst into him.
The enemy had infiltrated the trench, which made the SS have to look to the right and left of them as well as to their front. But those who were still able continued to fight; vicious and close up. If they wanted to surrender before, it was too late at this stage. One of the HLI men saw an NCO with one arm blown off throw back a grenade. Bayonets stabbed bellies and faces. Grenades exploded everywhere. Submachine-guns and rifles fired at point blank range around the bends in the trench. The insides of humans spilled out onto the bottom of a trench already littered bodies, weapons, shell casings and pools of blood.
Not a single prisoner was taken from this company. After the Highland Light Infantry of Canada had fought through the ditch and the trenches forward of Buron, all that remained of the HitlerJugend from Number 10 Company, 25th SS Panzergrenadiers, were a pile of corpses.