TWO LIKE US

CHAPTER 2: STEPHAN

It’s absurd how life can be so unpredictable that it catapults you, from one day to the next, from a university classroom to a battlefield, where the hours of the day are marked by the ringing of sentries and where every passing minute could be the last one.
Since I was a child I have always been a hothead, my impulsiveness has taken control of my life and my actions countless times and this has not always been a good thing. My parents’ punishments were always very severe but it didn’t matter to me if what I wanted to do went against their wishes. During adolescence I reached the pinnacle of freedom, I felt like a galloping horse in the middle of an endless expanse of green grass and that’s what people began to see in me, a soul free from every rule, from every verdict.
I have been enrolled in the faculty of literature for a year; it is the only subject that, since school, has never ceased to interest me: the critical ability, the desire to think and create stories, the ability to argue and reach a conclusion; I believed it was the purest and truest form of freedom there could be.
When Hitler insinuated himself into the political bodies of Germany, my country changed and with him also my destiny: in 1926, the so-called Hitler Youth, an organization created specifically to prepare young people to serve in the armed forces, through training military and paramilitary. At the time he was just a kid, ignorant of politics and everything it could imply; of what human cruelty could be capable of doing, ignorant of the banality of evil.
Like many other kids, I too was forced to be part of this organization, even though my parents were completely against it; I still remember my mother’s tears and my father’s saddened face every time they saw their boy, a free spirit, transformed into a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer much bigger and stronger than him. But as much as I hated taking orders, I loved fighting, I loved holding weapons and rifles, shooting dummies and bragging about the fact that no other soldier had my aim and precision.
At the outbreak of the war I was enrolled in the official German army despite my young age, I had recently started university and although I hated abandoning what I loved, I felt it was my duty to protect the place that had welcomed me since birth, unaware that the nation I loved so much would soon be the cause of the death of millions of innocents.
Three years have passed since then and no matter how hard life can be in the trenches, I must say that it is never boring.
My aim has improved further, as have my skills in handling weapons of different ranges. Many enemies have fallen at my hands and more will fall again.
“Stephan”
I hear my name being called and this makes me turn around at such a speed that I feel the muscles in my neck suddenly stretch: it’s Josh, one of the guys I met during the organization, a dark-haired guy, with light eyes, imposing and hostile looking but with a tender heart, so much so that most of the time I wonder what he is doing here.
“The general has made a temporary truce with the American army, we have three days of peace”
I hadn’t heard that word for a long time now, I had almost forgotten what it meant or how good those letters put together, one next to the other, could sound.
“Perfect, that will be enough time for us to get back on our feet and crush the United States once and for all.”
“There will be time for that, after today’s meeting in which the new strategies will be decided, the general has given us some free time to recover us physically and mentally, more men are falling due to the madness that this place generates, than by the enemy’s hand”
I remained silent as I watched him walk away from the place where we slept those few hours, necessary just to avoid collapsing on the battlefield.
The next morning, I decided to wake up before my companions, at the first light of dawn; I wanted to take a tour outside the trench and maybe enjoy a few pages of the book I had brought in my luggage before leaving. I got out without too much trouble and headed to a place far enough away from the “headquarters” so that no one could come and disturb me, but alas, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to be alone that morning; in the distance I glimpsed a motionless, black shadow that seemed to be staring at a fixed point in the sky, I couldn’t understand if it had weapons, or what army it was from; I crept up and pulled out the gun I had carried in the holster for safety, aiming it straight at the stranger’s head.
“Turn around”