Kwassass - Grunt
I hate the cold.
Family died from it once so, you know, it's kind of personal.
I was in the battle of Harvest, it wasn't easy. The Front ships... they just would not die. Seriously we would throw plasma and everything else at them but their shields just wouldn't go down with any single hit. When they did go down their armor would just tank our hits until the shields recovered just as good as new to take more hits while our guns kept missing for some reason. Honestly, it was a nightmare. Because their big ships, their dreadnoughts? They were fully capable of destroying a capital ship in a couple of hits. So while we are fighting we see these big centuries plus year old ships that have withstood countless campaigns be obliterated in front of us like it was nothing.
I can't tell you the sheer terror I felt as the Front ships got closer and closer and just unloaded on us. More than once we were forced to call for back up and their god damned ships just would not die. This went on for a week, and then these new ships show up and the ships that were giving us so much trouble just... go away.
From then on it was easy, like shooting poggies in a barrel. We obliterated the new fleet and glassed the world, the operation was a success. You want to know something weird? We knew practically nothing about humanity, we assumed the Front was the elite part of a united human military and the UNSC was the far-off colonial branch with shitty hand-me-downs. So we were convinced that the human homeworld was in Front space for the entire war. Even when we saw evidence that Earth was elsewhere we just assumed it was a lie.
The core of human civilization had to be in Front space, the idea that colonials would have superior tech than the homeworld was just insane to us and god damned did the Front give us trouble. It got to the point where being sent to fight the UNSC was considered the 'good' job for naval personal. I mean there was easy glory to be won there but with the Front, even with numbers, their ships just would not die. Add to it that there were always traps because they always seemed to know when we would be coming and it was some of the worst fighting during the war.
And it was fighting that only got worse over time.