The sentence is rather gothic complete with the over description of the atmosphere and boy do I love gothic atmosphere. I was writing an atmospheric piece for the anniversary of Vimy Ridge and I all I have is little snippets that sound cool but are hard to round into a coherent mass. A sample:

It is slightly below freezing, but the pre-dawn sky is full of fire, flaring up from the ridge that is our objective. It had been this way for a week, as our guns poured shells like water into the German positions. I had heard that they fired a million shells at the Germans in preparation for the attack. It probably won't be enough. It's never enough. The machine guns always survive.