Lake - Book 1, 1939

Defense

November 11, 1939 - 11:18

All of the alarms were going off, one of the loudest noises I had ever heard, I yelled at the other towers and told them where the enemies were and all of the partisan army was out and armed in the center of the fort, they started marching towards the entrance where they placed sand bags for cover and hid there until told to fire. The Germans were advancing, running. I reloaded my gun and pulled the trigger, while aiming at the head I hit a guys foot, soon came a medic trying to help him, I aimed a little over his head and shot, this time I actually hit his head. Finally. The other snipers started picking off some troops, my main goal was getting the medics. One person was carrying a suitcase, scared that it might contain a bomb or some important documents, I tried to shoot it and I hit the suitcase and the man's leg, jackpot. One of the people was carrying a rocket launcher of some sort, he aimed it at the sandbags in the entrance and shot, luckily he missed and hit the fort's exterior wall, no one died.

I was aiming down my scope and saw some leaves on the ground, wait, leaves? Those can't be leaves they're way too far from the tree. I saw a grey stick coming out of the leaves, IT WAS THE BARREL OF A GUN! There was a German sniper aiming towards our ground troops still hiding behind the sandbags. I tried to take a shot at him. I missed. Then he shot somewhere near me, he obviously didn't hit me, but I heard some grunting coming from Alex, the sniper hit Alex! He had hit his bottom chest on the left side! I went to Alex and carried him, I realized that I couldn't carry him down the ladder so I yelled and yelled for help, Alex wasn't going to die here and now, I couldn't accept it and neither could he. Someone was at the bottom of the ladder now, I told him about the situation so he grabbed a rope, he told me to tie it to the top of the ladder, I did so, then I tied another rope to him that was connected to the ladder, I went down and after that, he pulled the ladder down and we grabbed it just before it hit the ground, after that we untied him and ran to the nearest hospital. There we ran into one of the rooms and dropped him on a block of wool, that served as a bed like in our rooms.

A doctor saw us run into the room and so did he, he got some pliers of some sort and two plastic gloves. He put his finger down the bullet hole and saw how deep the bullet was, he tried to pull it up but he pulled it up just a little bit, he then got the thin pliers and put them in the hole, luckily, they we're thin enough to pull the bullet out , he got some cloth and wrapped it around his chest where the bullet had been.

"He luckily survived by a miracle, but he will have to be here for a while, a week more or less." The doctor had said.

"Okay, I guess." I replied. With a sad look on my face.

I went back outside and not the tower. I saw that the nazis were in range and the partisans were already engaged in a firefight, I pulled out my flintlock, aimed it at a nazi and shot, direct headshot. I stood right there and loaded my gun, no one shot me, but I shot them, another headshot. I grabbed a bottle of alcohol that was left at the entrance and was three fourths empty, I grabbed some tissues, light them up with a torch at the entrance and threw it, we all knew what was going to happen, the bottle was going to erupt in a large explosion of fire. It hit a nazi right on the head, spread over him and some of his comrades and burnt them, what they deserved for hurting Alex. I was infuriated and seemed revenge, I felt like I had to avenge Alex, but even when I thought of things I could do they never worked, it still felt the same, it felt like my fault. Then I remembered, Alex had left his gun up in the tower, i ran towards the tower, put the ladder back up and climbed up, it felt like the right thing to do to avenge him. I got the gun, went down and into the entrance. Time to get the party started.

I got to the entrance and checked on my gun, well, Alex's gun. It looked fine and the clip was full. I ran I to the sandbags for cover and I stood up when it felt safe. The nazis were all hiding, behind bushes, trees or rocks, nothing else. I scanned the area and while I could only see little feet poking out of the bottoms of trees, I saw someone hiding behind a small bush not too far away. I could slightly see because of the nights darkness but I saw a little bit that was illuminated by a trucks headlights, someone left their car on. I shot the bush and saw a corpse fall to the ground. That's when I realized that revenge wasn't sweet. It was horrible, it only made you merciless for a bad cause. It wasn't any better than what my life would be like without revenge. One of the partisans using the same cover as me looked at me and said,

"Are you going to do something?! These nazis have just attacked us and you choose to be there, taking cover, hiding, I don't know what type of soldier you are, but if you're a newly recruited soldier then If you keep up the mercy it gets worse! Think of it this way, these people are here to kill you, and if you don't kill them first, they kill you."

I looked at him and nodded, I pulled out my sniper and aimed it at the truck's headlights. I shot. Everything went dark. My comrades looked at me and said things like:

"Are you trying to kill us!?"

"What's your problem!?"

But one person said,

"Don't worry guys, we have these for a reason." He said as he pulled out a fire grenade.

One person tossed me one and I threw it at a tree, I threw it at a tree's leaves, it started burning the thin branches and soon enough it started burning the top of the tree, the fire spread and went all over the tree. It was making a great source of light, my comrades
used it and their own grenade lit things to see and fire, thinking of having done enough killing, I was all about support at this stage of the firefight. I started firing my gun without aiming so that I wouldn't have to be aware of killing anyone as I never wanted to anyways.

The fight was over and it lasted about thirty minutes, us partisans took no casualties but had many injured, which was because we had much greater cover and strategic plans; tactics.

We got in our rooms and started sleeping, being here without Alex felt so much different, especially for just my second night.

November 12, 1939 - 8:34

We were waken up by some noise from outside. Soon rushed someone to the underground and he was carrying a small box. I didn't know what was in there. He threw some bulky, boxy black object towards me. It was a handheld radio, he told me to keep it in my room. I carved out a hole in the corner in my side of the room, there I placed the radio. An announcement came on in the radio. It was telling us, the partisan soldiers of the task force, Foxtrot, to group up at the stage. We went and sat down. Someone came on the stage.

" 'Ello mates! Today we have a special mission for you guys. There's been people rebelling at the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, we need to help, we're going to perform a complete evacuation. All nazis will be exterminated and all Jews should be saved. There are about 10,000 so we're bringing in all of our vehicles, including my Tank Little Sammy. You will be Evac, Support and Assistance. You will have a snipers nest on top of a mountain nearby where all snipers will be together, you will be responsible for medics and medication and evacuating the Jews as well as other task forces. Now, all snipers form a line here, medics here, all drivers here and all soldiers here." He said as he indicated four spots for us to form lines.

We formed a line and were given a crate of silencers, we each grabbed one and passed it on, mine was one the longest one there, and with my gun already being one of the the largest I had a huge weapon at that point. We were assigned vehicles, one fourth of the snipers went inside a truck with no windows where we would be able to shoot just in case and the other three fourths went in three other trucks, all filled with snipers. Perfect.

"Okay here we go!" exclaimed the driver as he stepped on the pedal. The truck started going and we were one of the last trucks in the line, the furthermost vehicle was the Tank, little Sammy.