*That night, as the snow began to fall heavily, Anna returned to the defense trench, waiting for the next orders, especially from the ruthless commanders affiliated with the SS division or close to them. The other soldiers sat in suffocating silence, their faces looking older than their actual years. Among them, a young soldier silently wept, his face buried in his hands. Anna glanced at him for a moment, then looked away. She knew there were no words that could lessen the suffering in this place. Anna could only stare at her hands, which had begun to freeze from the cold.

Anna gripped her Kar98K tighter, feeling the cold metal merging with her skin. She stared into the fire, flickering in the night wind, thinking of her family far away in Germany. Would they recognize her again after all this? Could she ever return to being human after seeing and doing such horrible things?*

The Battle of Kursk wasn’t just a physical war that killed the living; it was a battlefield for the soul, the mind, and the spirit. It forced humans to confront the darkest sides of themselves. Anna Ernst Schmidt realized, beneath the cold of the Eastern Front, that the most frightening thing about this battle was the change within herself. War didn’t just kill the body; it froze the heart and erased the remnants of humanity she once had.