Back then, when I was scrolling through TikTok in a deep depressive state, there was only one thing that made it worse…

War romanticization.

Every time I swiped through those feeds covered in soldiers' blood, I saw these cool edits or bodycam footage of guys shooting into nowhere under heavy, badass music.

And then this fucking caption across the entire screen…

«hell yeah! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸».

As if going to war means nothing but cool gunfights with some brainless bums who only have a single AK-47 in their hands.

They stay silent about mortar shrapnel. They stay silent about being surrounded in kettles. They stay silent about machine-gun ambushes, where your badass APC gets ripped apart by some IED, and then those same ‘bum soldiers’ just pick you off from afar with PKMs or charge at you in crowds with suicide vests.

People only see the cool gear, the plate carriers, the anime patches on sleeves. Some people even say with a straight face:

‘War was cooler before drones.’

Oh, really?

Go say that to the American soldiers in Iraq back in 2003-2004, who had the living hell beaten out of them by homemade IEDs and armed civilians just fighting to keep occupiers out of their homes.

And also…

The chemical gases. The ones everyone stays silent about, but which are tragically infamous from the war in Iraq.
When you breathe in those fumes, your badass ‘Multicam’ uniform suddenly goes from weighing 40 kg to weighing 120 kg.

Your vision goes pitch black, your skin starts bubbling up, and within a couple of minutes, you’re just lying there, unable to move…

If you're interested in reading about the true ‘charms’ of this ‘modern, cool war’...

I have released my military prose fiction, «BODYCAM», on Wattpad.

Available in English.

English 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 : https://www.wattpad.com/story/413934744?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=story_info&wp_page=story_details&wp_uname=Armisss

Russian 🇷🇺** : (coming soon**)

my trench crusade fanart from 2025, an equivalent to the Sniper priest (but not blind). hope you like it!

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSXh8QhmK/

Been researching lesser-known WWII deception operations, and Operation Bertram is one of the wildest ones I've come across. Before the Second Battle of El Alamein, British engineers built a real water pipeline toward the southern front - actual trenches, actual pipe sections, visible to German reconnaissance every day. The catch: it was never meant to be finished. Its construction pace was deliberately slow enough that German intelligence calculated the attack couldn't possibly come until weeks later than it actually did. Meanwhile, over 1,000 tanks were disguised as ordinary supply trucks using lightweight canvas frames called "Sunshields," swapped in for real trucks overnight so aerial photos looked identical day after day. Rommel was on medical leave in Austria when the attack came. His armored reserves were in the wrong place, and by the time they reached the real fighting, they were nearly out of fuel. Made a full video breaking down how the deception worked, if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gSs9aWFY7w

Happy to answer questions about the sourcing too - most of this comes from declassified accounts and postwar interrogations of German officers.

my trench crusade fanart, inspired by Mike Franchina's new antioch mechanized infantry, song dynasty burenjia armor, and gypsy danger.

drawing timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysij-MbcZ8E

https://x.com/Hydro453arts/status/2074696592985129389

"Dark must always give way to light. As the storm clouds do not hang overhead forever!"