Right, so today, i'm here to share with u guys a short story i wrote last month.. it's already posted on yiwei's blog, but since no one goes there, its gonna be on my blog.. =D
Prologue
Family was never a quiet place; dad was a sergeant in the royal infantry in the Great War, mom passed away shortly after I was born, so I never really had a family.
I hung around the air field after school, only going home when it was close to supper time. My dad didn’t care; I think he wouldn’t notice even if I went missing for a couple of weeks. School life was terrible, I always got picked on by bully, when I told my dad that I was being bullied, he asked me to stop being such a baby and don’t bother him with things which I could settle.
My family life was worst cause I have no siblings, and my dad was drunk most of the time; so when ever he was unhappy, he would scream and shout like a raving maniac. So many times I prayed to god to take me away, to bring me to a better place in which I could get away from my father, I loathed that man; that idiotic bugger.
Chapter 1
My chance came when I was in my last year of school, an enlister came round to get us join the army, to fight for the king and queen as tension heated up in Europe. I wasn’t in to politics or world situation, but what I heard from the enlister is that a raving madman called Adolph Hitler is leading Germany into another war, and they desperately need all the young man they could lay their hands on.
The pay was definitely better than working on some rat infested pier, so signed up, so when I went home and told my dad that I’ve signed up, he merely slurred “ you bloody bugger, you’ll get killed in training, don’t come back crying”; so I replied “ we’ll see, so long old man”, grabbed my bags and boarded the first bus to the army base in Aldershot, Hampshire.
Legally, I wasn’t old enough to join the army, so the enlister there went “Lad, remember, from this point onwards, you are no longer seventeen, you are eighteen, you understand?”
”Yes.”
”We address officers as Sir’s’
”Yes Sir.”
”Good, take these papers and move on the sergeant over there.”
My enlistment went without a hitch; I was attached to the seventh army, and trained as a rifleman. After 3 months of military training, and being promoted to Corporal, I was given a choice to either work for my sergeant rank, or go into sniper training since they found out that I was pretty damn accurate with a Short-Magazine-Lee-Enfield or SMLE for short, which was England’s standard issue rifle to all infantry. I took up the offer to become a sniper, and so off I went to sniper school.
At sniper school, I was taught the art of stalking from a couple of Canadian game hunters. I learnt how to apply camouflage using natural vegetation, which made me quite invisible in the forest; learnt how to handle my sniper rifle and use it effectively and averaging about 20 shots down the range and onto target everyday. Out of the 50 selected for the sniper course, 40 washed out and only us 10 got selected.
Out of the 10, one guy I remember as Todd got lost in a field exercise; we found his dead rotting body in the forest few days later; don’t really know wad happened to him. What the commanding officer told us was that he got bitten by a poisonous snake.
I graduated second, and off I went, to tear down Hitler’s fortress, and to liberate France. My problem started even before I saw France. Them bugger spent so much money training such an efficient sniper, and than they put him in a ruddy old Lancaster, with looked so old and tattered that I was doubtful that it would even get off the ground.
When I got on, I cracked a joke to the pilot; I said “ good day mate, seriously speaking, would this kite get off the ground?”
”I’m not sure mate.”
”WHAT?”
”Gotcha there chap! Heh heh”
”God dammit, that was a good one there.”
”There’s your parachute, strap it on later when we’re over the Atlantic; when this formation’s dropping out eggs on Caen, you’ll go through the bomb bays before our bombing run, that way, the high command thinks that the sniper would be safe using us bombers as a decoy.”
”Much obliged mate.”
Over the Atlantic, I saw the Royal navy, The U.S Navy, and the Canadian navy side by side each other, in an endless column of ships, and the tiny landing ships carrying troops, fuel, ammunition and equipments to Normandy beach.
The pilot told me that I had 5 more minutes till drop. I strapped on my parachute tightly, checked that I had everything on me, said the briefest of the brief prayer; the pilot opened the bomb bay doors, gave me a salute and shouted over the roar of the engine for me to go; so off I went.
I dropped without incident, as it was evening and relatively dark. I assembled my weapons, buried the parachute and took a leak. I pulled out my map and compass to find my bearings. After figuring out where am I set out along the forest path towards my objective.
Halfway through, I saw a figure, most probably German because the moon shone off his polished metal helmet, and he had a leathery sweaty odor, common to German’s with leather side arm holster; I quietly drew out my sharp knife that I had kept it rust free and black, by pouring industrial machinery lubricant into the sheath. It worked like a charm; my dagger was black from hilt to tip.
I crept up slowly onto the unsuspecting German, taking care not to rustle the leaves beneath my feet. I managed to whisper “Heil Hitler ja?” before stabbing my dagger in a 45 degrees decline angle to the side of his throat, the reason being the blood would flow into the windpipe, ensuring that the victim would not scream, and the side have less fiber strands than the front of the neck.
The German gurgled as he spat blood every time he tried to speak. In the brightness of the moonlight, I saw his face turn blue, than white as he tried in vain to breath, but the air just hissed out of the gaping hole in the side of his neck; soon the German lay dead in a pool of his own blood, after dumping his body among the trees in the forest, I crept along my way, keeping my eyes open and my nose programmed to smell for any more Germans.
Chapter 2
23rd July 2008
It got light pretty damn fast, so I crept into the forest in early dawn, dug me a foxhole and covered it with a couple of logs, and leafs to act as a camouflage and a top shelter against any artillery shells. I slept till late afternoon because my sleep was so damn eventful; artillery shells were landing a little close for comfort, and a heavy shower in mid afternoon sent all sorts of creepy crawlies creeping into my pants, I took out 2 beetles, one millipede from my pants, another millipede from my shirt and squished 15 ants, a random artillery shell agitated an ant’s nest, which sent thousands of big nasty looking red ants swarming towards me, so I took my rifle and went on my way.
1735 hours on my watch. I came onto this Norman farm house, made of stone next to a maze of hedgerows which surrounded a patch of fertile land. Looking through my scope, I could see no defensive measures taken even though it was obviously a command post, with a jeep outside, and a few radio antennas sticking out of the windows; an officer, with a captain insignia on his stiffly starched epaulet, was bent over a table; checking reports and charting on a map that was spread out on a very large dining table, The German captain looked immaculate in his grey officer uniform which accentuated his broad shoulders and his immensely fit body. Next to him stood a German soldier with the sergeant stripes on his arm, and a German MP-40 sub machine gun slung behind his back.
1750 hours, I’ve formulated my attack and ambush strategy and my escape plan. One lesson the hunters taught me was that before man learnt to walk or run, he crawled. So I crawled and crept towards the small stone house, pushing aside fertile dirt, which meant that it smelt like very fresh horse dung and the soil around the house stank like the British underground’s lavatory, where drunkard’s pee often failed to find their target.
I carefully crept beneath the window, slowly crawling towards the door. The building was designed in such a way that the doorway was protruding into the building; therefore I could not be seen by anyone inside the building through the window. I took out one of the half dozen concussion grenade that I was provided with, took out a reel of fishing line, and cut out one long piece of fishing line from it; I dug a nice small hole half the size of the grenade just outside the door, placed the grenade in, so that the spoon is one quarters covered by soil. I tied the string around the grenade tightly, measuring the length to the door, tied it tightly around the door knob, and removed the safety pin.
In theory, the simple booby trap thought up by me is such that, when someone opens the door, the grenade gets pulled out by the string, and the spoon would be released, as I did not tie the string around the spoon and the safety pin is removed.
I back tracked on my crawling marks, making sure to stay low all this time. When I reached my position, it was nearly 1830. I looked through the scope, thankful that there was no winds, I took the prone position behind a log, adjusted the sights, and looked through the scope. I saw the officer now on the other side of the table, looking towards the table. I caught side if his deep blue eyes, and blond hair; he had a strong jawbone, and his face looked so flawless that he looked more like a model than a soldier.
Too bad, a German is a German is a German, and this is war. I steadied my breathing, centered the crosshair onto his forehead,
”your mom’s getting a letter for thanksgiving, along with all my mates that died on the beach.” I whispered to myself.
Gently applying pressure to the trigger, my heart beat in anticipation on when the trigger would give way to the firing mechanism, where the firing pin would strike the bullet, creating a mini explosion in the rifle, sending the bullet flying down the barrel, and burying into the officer’s brain.
My rifle gave out a deafening bang as the trigger caught; I continued looking through the scope, and I saw the officer slump against the table; on the wall behind him I saw a blood splat and a bullet hole as my sniper rifle bullet penetrated through his head and lodged itself in the wall behind. The sergeant came out of the door almost instantly, his submachine gun at the ready.
I saw him react as the grenade flew out of the soil; it was almost slow motion as adrenalin pumped through my veins, he tried to duck and prone as a object flew towards him, looking through the scope again; I saw his face contorted in pure horror as the grenade landed in front of him; the last fight he put up was trying to shield his face with his helmet; Useless.
The grenade went off as a random artillery shell whistled in nearby; as the smoke clear, I saw that all remain of the German sergeant was his torso and legs. His arms and head was all around the doorway as that were the parts that was directly in contact with the grenade.
I made my way back into the house after waiting for more than 30 minutes. I searched the officer’s dead body, found a flask of whiskey and stuffed that into my leg pocket, found a Luger; which was the much sought after pistol that most German officer carry, Took all intelligence report and stuffed it into my duffel back, together with the map. Smashed the radio, and broke the window. I placed another one of the booby trap inside, only this time I wedged the grenade horizontally between two of the heavier radio sets, and carefully removing the safety pin after I’m done, I exited through the window. Outside, I searched the sergeant, found a Hitler’s youth knife, Taking a closer look, the sergeant looked around my age and had a Hitler’s youth insignia on his collar. He was a kid, who still had a long life ahead of him, but Hitler’s occupation of Europe caused this kid his life, killed by a total stranger… me.
Chapter 3
With the night fast approaching, I hastily dug a foxhole and laid in it, with the aid of the whiskey that I liberated from the officer earlier; I soon fell into a deep alcohol induced sleep.
I shook myself awake as sunlight filled my foxhole and my eyes, Stood upright, only to lose my balance and fall down as a tremendous wave of headache caused my head to spin rapidly, bloody hangover.
Crawling along, I soon came to a small farmhouse. I crept slowly, steadily towards the house, with my rifle at the ready. A huge crate nearly landed on me through the trees, as a low flying fighter bomber raced by. With tree branches and leaves raining down on me, I cursed silently as I took cover behind one big log that offered me cover from anyone on the road or the farm house that happens to look at my direction.
I raised my head and took at the crate that nearly killed me ten minutes earlier, there was a big red cross painted on the crate, which meant that this was one of the many care packages that red cross sent to France resistance through the use of a planned parachute drop at certain places that the French resistance were high in numbers.
Raising my head slightly as I heard a rustle of leaves between some trees roughly thirty yards away, I saw a German soldier; not carrying any weapon but a field dagger. He walked noisily towards the crate, oblivious of his surrounding. When he got to the crate, he decided that facing towards the road will result in more light being shone on to the crate, Doom on him.
As he worked tediously on cutting the ropes binding the crate, I gently snuck up on him, step by step; careful not to land my foot on any dry leaves or twigs lying around. As I approached him, I never knew if he sensed me, or he smelt my very fragrant body. But he spun around faster than a spinning top. His faced changed from shock and horror, to a face of pure determination, a little bit of fear; but none the less determined to kill me before I kill him.
Before he could retrieve his knife, which was still on the crate; I drew out my dagger and leapt towards the German with the tip of my knife pointing at him. I misjudged and missed his torso, but he froze to his spot and my knife was buried in his thigh. He screamed in agony, as he fell to the ground; I took that opportunity to pull out the beautiful Hitler’s youth knife strapped to my boots, and I drove the tip of it towards the middle of his torso, and ripped my way up to his throat. I took out both my knifes, cleaned them on the uniform of the now dead German and replaced them in their respective sheath.
A shot rang out I felt as though someone had took a cricket bat, swung it at his hardest and hit me on the leg. I fell to the ground hard as I saw the German’s friend just outside the forest, with a K98 bolt action rifle in his hand, with the muzzle pointing at me. He was feverishly working at his bolt, which in his panic, had jammed up. I summoned what remained of my strength, Aimed at the German’s chest and fired… I hit the German in his arm; as he spun from the recoil of the bullet hitting him, I Pulled the bolt back, pushed it forward and felt a bullet click into the chamber, this was completed in under 2 seconds. I adjusted my sights, fixed the crosshair between his petrified blue eyes, And squeezed off a round. I saw a blinding flash as the bullet raced towards him, and struck him just below his short blond hair.
I drew my focus to my bleeding leg. Just as I ripped the fabric of the pants to check on the wound, I heard another rustle of leaves; Quickly drawing the Luger from the holster, I leveled it and pointed it at the source of noise. But this time, I saw a girl, around my age. With the face of an angel and curly wavy hair. With deep blue eyes, her face was my image of female perfection, an angel. The face led down to a body that would put most leading actress in the united states or England to shame.
She walked up to me cautiously, and asked if I am alright in slightly accented English. I checked my leg, thankful that there was a bullet hole on both side. This meant that the bullet did not hit any bone and lodge inside the leg. She began prying off the top of the crate, took out a bag from it and found a first aid kit inside the bag. She took out a flask, which contained alcohol. As she gently poured the alcohol around the wound to disinfect it, I grinded my teeth in pain as the alcohol felt like a thousand pins sticking into my leg.
Aware of my pain, she told me to relax, took out a white packet, opened it and sprinkled some sulfa powder on my wound, causing me to wince in pain; slapped on a bandage and repeated this agonizing process on the other side where the bullet exited. She stuck out her hands and said “British I assume? Anyway, I’m Sophie, pleased to meet you.”
” Yeah, I’m a British sniper… pleased to meet you too, my name’s …”
”Smith,” She completed my sentence smiling, “John smith.”
”How did you? … “
”Your name tag.” She said giggling.
Her tone suddenly turned serious
” I think u better help me move the contents of this crate into my farm house, the gun fire would attract some Germans to this area, so we’d better move fast.”
I couldn’t agree more, but as I stood up, jolts of pain shot up my leg and caused me to stumble and fall down once more. Sophie helped me to stand this time, careful not to exert too much pressure on my bad leg, I was able to limp my way to the crate and take a few bags of supplies. We made our way as fast as my leg permitted to the farmhouse, where she found a towel, clothing that fit me, and a bucket of water for me to wash up.
After washing up and changing into fresh clothes, I saw Sophie helping me wash my uniform near the well, and than soaked it in a pail of water inside the house.
She then led me to a guest room where a lamp hung from the roof, a bed in the corner of the whitewashed room. This may not seem a lot today, but I was grateful that I have a nice soft bed to sleep on for the night. I thanked her for the shelter and than went into a nice deep sleep almost immediately after my head touched the bed.
Chapter 4
I woke to the smell of strong aroma of a nice hot pot of coffee being boiled over the stove. As strong tantalizing smell wafted deep into my nose, I realized that I had ate nothing for the past two days, save for the flask of whiskey I found. I shook myself awake, went into the living room and saw Sophie setting up the table for breakfast, which consisted of a few eggs that was sizzling in the pan on the stove, a nice big pot of a incredibly fragrant coffee and a few slices of bread.
She made me sit down and placed a plate of egg and bread, together with a cup of coffee in front of me. I thanked her for the meal, and wolfed down my food. After the meal, she told me that I could stay as long as I liked, as I was in no condition to fight in the war with my leg wounded. I took up her offer and thanked her profusely, offering my help for any chores she needed around the house.
The days went by without any incident, I helped her draw water from the well, weed and look after the plants she grew in her garden. It was one week later. It was the middle of the night, when Sophie shook me awake. She had a wild and frantic look in the face that scared the living daylights out of me. She just told me to grab my gear, place my uniform in the bag and follow her; saying that she had to move off soon.
When I asked her what’s the reason for moving in the middle of the night; she said that the Germans found out that she was with the local French resistance, and that they were coming after her. I groggily got to my feet, took my uniform and stuffed it in my bag, wore my boots and followed after her. Before we made it to the door, a big fat German officer kicked open the white wooden door and strode in. His left hand was placed in his pocket, and in his right hand, he held a huge pistol; that looked small in his humongous palms. The pistol was cocked, with a round chambered inside the barrel.
I felt downright uneasy as the officer, which looked very much like those hypocritical, greedy world war two German officer that Hollywood portrays, leveled his pistol and aimed it at my chest. He had a sadistic smile on his face as he fingered the trigger. Before he could shoot, Sophie leapt forward and tried to knock the officer off balance. But the officer was so big and strong Sophie’s attempt was akin to a fly trying to move a cow. The German officer did not fall down, but he did lose his concentration for a split second; grabbing that chance, I pulled out the dagger I kept hidden in my boots and lunged at the officer, plunging the knife deep into his upper torso, pulling out the dagger, I saw his face full of hatred, horror, fear and pain. Before he could react, I plunged the dagger back in and stabbed repeatedly, until he fell to the ground.
With bright red blood bubbling from his mouth, I knew that my knife punctured his lungs. With the moonlight now shining brightly in to the house, the light reflected bright red blood on my dagger. I dropped the dagger, reached in my bag for the metal flask of whiskey; but before I could reach it, I felt an agonizing pain in my lower back. I shot straight back up, sending jolts of pain from both my back and my thighs back into my brain. I looked up, straight into Sophie’s face, with her face covered in such an evil maniacal look that made me wonder what happened to her, until I saw the still bloody dagger in her hands.