[quote=@Gutshot]
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I like the setting and the way of counting down to everyone's new year's resolutions, really reminds me of wartales from World War Two. A very good and brief summary of events leading to this war-torn environment also helped feed the tone, and indeed did some of the survivor's resolutions allow the reader to relate. But really, that's where the reader-character connection ended.

With the way you ended your story with the threat of eliminating this quickly introduced team of characters, the pay-off of [i]"Oh no they might die"[/i] was played down a lot due to this obvious lack of character development. With no prior knowledge to help me connect with the characters through sympathy or understanding, other than the suggested stereotypes and blindness of one soldier, the countdown and suspense of an oncoming bombardment were almost totally negated. Perhaps focusing on one character and telling their life story, or the relationships and stories of this whole group of characters, would've helped. But, again, without that emotional build-up, there's only a dry payoff.

But, as [@Silver] said, the tininess of these almost World War-like veterans does give a solemn tone to the short story. Your piece does have some great aspects, as said: The beginning description, the atmosphere, etc. But, again, what makes death the saddest is when you can see, [i]personally[/i], what had and could've been.
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I didn't know the community got to vote on it either, that will teach me for not reading the fine print. I realise that it might not be the done thing to leap to one's own defence when it comes to reviews, but your review touched upon one of those things I was actually quite nervous about just after hitting the send button. 

[hider=Wait! Give me a second to explain! It's behind a hider so you don't need to read it if you don't fancy it!]The original version of the story was a fair bit longer, and I struggled with trying to create a character that was fully fleshed out without it going off the rails in terms of length. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to cut out, and I ended up feeling far happier with it as an exercise in telling as much as I could with as little as possible, going for evoking a feeling rather than trying to tell a complete story. I'd decided that there'd be no real pay-off in terms of plot (a nod to the bonus category of “[i]…That was anticlimactic.[/i]”), no reason for the war given, and so every time I started writing more things about the characters and trying to establish who they were and flesh out why they were fighting, it watered down the sense of bleakness.

In one version, the soldiers survived. In another, the soldiers died. If they survived, it wouldn't feel so bleak and pointless. If they die, it wouldn't matter because there was no personal connection. Neither felt as satisfying, to me at least, as to end it before finding out their fate. Making a resolution is an act of hope, after all. The bleakness probably did suggest a Bad End for the soldiers, but who knows.

It was a gamble, and I'm still not one hundred percent sure whether or not it was the right way to go. I think it would've been a more engaging narrative if it had gone down a route where an emotional connection was made with a character. It just ended up being, broadly, not that sort of short story.
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