TWO LIKE US

CHAPTER 1: DYLAN

I often wonder if you are happy like me.
The general yelling at everyone to return to base brings me back to reality.
The last battle was, without a doubt, the hardest since I have been here at the front; we lost many men and we would have lost others if we had not managed to return in time after the explosion of the last bomb.
“We need to change strategy; we must take them by surprise and eliminate the sentries before they manage to sound the alarm; only in this way could we have a bit of an advantage over them”
General Sienna began, as soon as he entered what was once our meeting room but which now looked more like the attic of a house abandoned for decades, in which no one would want to set foot anymore. The bombings had caused the side walls to collapse and from the ceiling, pieces of plaster continued to fall due to the terrible tremors; there was almost nothing left of our lockers, just a few doors where we could store weapons in need of repair or the uniforms of the fallen.
Three years have now passed since the beginning of the War, three years since Hitler’s Germany decided to carry out a real extermination against every man or woman who did not reflect the ideal of the Aryan race that he would have liked to colonize the world. The US government had recruited dozens of boys, even those who had just turned 18, into the ranks of its army; among these I was also present, Dylan Nolan. I was born in a small town in Michigan, my family is wealthy and for this reason, I had the privilege of receiving an exemplary education in every field of knowledge; in particular, I have always been in love with philosophy; I would even like to teach it one day, I think that few guys, especially my age, are capable of truly appreciating it. Unfortunately though, life had other plans for me.
Military life was a blow for all those who were not used to suffocating training, myself included, not to mention the terrible conditions in which one found oneself living in the trenches or every single time in which one was forced to see one’s comrades mutilated and killed by an enemy, without mercy, obsessed with bringing his stupid and inhuman ideal into the world.
I was a simple soldier, I had no experience either with weapons or even with combat, whether it was at close range or not, I hate violence and yet, from one day to the next, I found myself having to kill guys like me for my sheer survival.
It was October 16, 1941, a morning like any other, at least this was what I thought as soon as I woke up, there had recently been a battle, the most turbulent of all and given the large number of losses as well as wounded, Sienna, preferred to stipulate a temporary truce of just 3 days, with the general of the opposing faction, even if without the knowledge of the two governments who would never have accepted such a thing, this to at least give both sides time to regain their strength and remove , from the battlefield, what remained of the fallen.
During these three days, for a few moments, it was possible to do what we wanted, without worrying about being killed at any moment, even if the air remained so heavy that it even made breathing difficult. 
It had been time immemorial that I hadn’t left the trench, unless I had to keep guard or fight and since there was a truce, I thought it would be regenerating to get away a little from that unlivable place that had now become my home; I felt I wanted to breathe something different from the smell of the holes we used as bathrooms or the smoke from the bombs which no longer allowed even the blue of the sky to shine through. I had forgotten what it was like to live in the sunlight. That day, most of my companions or my superiors were asleep or were simply too busy to notice a shadow trying to escape from those dungeons; I quickly slipped to the edge and with a leap reached the surface. Finally. My eyes flashed from one side to the other of the land in front of me, even if there was a momentary period of peace, the ambush could be around the corner at any moment: the war had taught me that one should never trust anyone.
I walked admiring a landscape which, although devastated by the horror of war and the blood of dozens of innocents, remained a paradise compared to the trenches; a paradise in which however I was not alone.
I was immersed in my thoughts when I heard footsteps approaching, my hearing had been damaged due to the bombs constantly dropped over the years but, despite this, my sixth sense warned me, even if too late, just a moment before find myself with a gun pointed at my head.