Partisans

Suspense Stories | Nov 19, 2014 | 6 min read
12 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Sarge
It's the 12th of December 1944. Our group has been shot down, and out of 72 there's only 4 left. Me, Ace, Dean, and Bill escaped from the Nazi groups in our base. We had to leave our food in the base, and now we're stuck in the Hürtgen forest, in the middle of this big war, and during the winter. The Nazi troops are everywhere here, and we have info for the Americans. We need to bring them by the 16th, but we're in Nazi lines, and some of the best troops are out for us, including the famed 116th panzer division led by Gerhard Graf von Schwerin.

"Hey Sarge!" whispered Bill. He's our sniper. " I spotted some Nazis around that corner. They're luckily only Wehrmacht, so we don't have to worry about vehicles. Just stay low. ". I replied " What do we do for the info? I mean we might be safe now, but we don't have any food and we need to give the info. What if the Nazis hold the line, and the Ardennes counter-offensive gets ruined? ". Dean gave his plan " We have to sneak through. Maybe we could find a Nazi to find out info about where the better divisions are. The divisions like the 116th panzer we could never take on. ". Ace angrily replied " I don't care where we go, I just want to kill more Krauts. ". Bill knew that wouldn't be possible " We have 2 rifles with, what... 5 rounds each? And all the divisions are around 10,000 troops. ".

I thought for a second, then realized " We need to find out where our troops are. They should be...". " They're on their own line in Vassenack. We can't make it that far. The Nazis are winning, you know. " Bill said. I can't believe I dug our troops into this hole. Our base was fine. We had a chance to escape and pass the info on, but instead I decided to wait. Then the Nazis came and found us. They shot 68 of us, and Bill, Dean and Ace ran off. I dropped down behind someone else, and covered myself with his body. They never noticed me, and went off. Then I found the other 3, and off we went, 4km off of Vassenack, the front line. Except we were on the wrong side.

I knew now that we would be in a near impossible situation, being in a huge battle. I mean, even Hitler and Eisenhower were directly commanding these troops. Eisenhower might be good, but Hitler is better, and he's winning, and he'll block every path, especially if he figures out we're here. "Alright, I have a plan" I said " we'll go through this stretch of forest 1km west, but then we'll have to pass the crossroads. The Nazis are guarding all the crossroads though, so we'll have to sneak through there. But the forest should be easy. ". So we started walking. a few hundred metres west we saw a shack. We walked in, Dean picked up a piece of paper, then started talking " This is an operations map. The 116th panzer division, three more infantry divisions and an airborne division are there. Simply sneaking through is incredibly difficult, so we should try going through somewhere else.

BOOM!!! We heard an explosion. I poked out, and saw some panzers with the 116th symbol on them. " Stay quiet " said Bill " if they find us we're dead.". But Ace ran out. A halftrack started firing. Us three jumped into the cellar, while the halftrack took down Ace and the shed with its machine gun. We heard them driving away. We waited an hour, then got out. It was all clear, but the shed was gone and it was night, so went to the cellar, and took turns sleeping.

When we got out of the cellar, Dean reminded us he still had that map. We decided to go south over a roadway, to a forest pathway that went 2.1 km, but it had a Nazi camp 1.7 km in. "Alright, crossing this roadway could be easy, but we don't know what troops are where. We do know, at least, that the 116th division is in the north. " I said. So we started crossing it. But then we heard a BANG.

It was the shot of a sniper. We sprinted to the other side and dove into a ditch. Bill grabbed his sniper rifle, and looked through the scope " I can't see the sniper, but there is ten people, one machine gunner squad of 3 and an rifleman squad of 7." then he started whispering to himself " come on, move on, move on...". A squad moved into our original path, but luckily it was only the machine gunner squad, which had two shooters and one guy carrying the machine gun. " Alright, let's take down the two with rifles, then let's interrogate the carrier." So me and Bill shot them with our rifles that had suppressors, but when we took down the carrier I realized he might not speak English.

Luckily he did. He said his name was Rudolf Geisse, and he told us some Nazi movements. But then he told us something about him, that he was forcefully put into the army, and that many of the Nazi army were old and young men and women. Rudolf wanted to join us, so he and Dean grabbed the dropped rifles from the shooters and off we went. We asked him a lot of questions before handing him the rifle, just to make sure he wasn't going to stab us in the back. I was kind of glad Ace wasn't here, because he would've shot him on the spot. I was also kind of surprised that no one really talked about Ace, but then again, we were used to seeing people "leave".

We walked up until the base. At the base we stopped and talked about the plan. " Alright, we've told Rudolf the info, so I say we all go different ways. That way at least if one of us dies, the rest will make it. I'll take that path on the left, the one with shrubbery all around. Rudolf, take the middle. Just walk through, it's not like anyone will question you. Bill and Dean, take those ditches on the side. Those look like they got shot by tanks, maybe they were used for training. " We ran off, and Rudolf went first. He was going fine. I went prone, then went through the shrubbery, but I couldn't see Bill and Dean. After the base, we would be home free.
I'm almost out of the path, and Rudolf already made it. Looks like at least we made it. I turned around ready to say goodbye, but there was a soldier there... Oh no.
Bill
"We're almost through. It looks like Rudolf already made it, but I can't see Sarge." I said. Dean got out of the ditches, and then I did too, and off we went to Rudolf. Was Sarge alright though? We heard a loud BANG from his path, but when we ran over expecting the worst it turned out it was his rifle shooting, and then he started running. He'd switched guns with Rudolf so he didn't have a silencer, so he had alerted the entire base that he was here, so he ran.
There were only infantry units in the base, but they had snipers. Me, Dean and Rudolf hadn't been spotted so we dove into a ditch, and saw Sarge hit the ground. He was lucky his clothes were natural camouflage in the white snow, but that wouldn't work well for long and he would freeze. The troops started moving while Sarge was crawling away, then we decided to cross a road to our right. We saw a battle-torn Vassenack, only 1.1 km away from our front line now. We sprinted while staying some-what down, and it worked. Me and Rudolf dove into yet another ditch, but Dean looked back. He was clearly devastated about leaving Sarge.

I knew up there he would be spotted and shot, but before I could react he ran back and started shooting. He ran in front of Sarge, while Sarge got up and sprinted to us, somehow unnoticed. I saw Dean get shot, so now it was the three of us, crawling through the front line. Here it was bad. There were panzers, panthers, Wehrmacht and some planes up above, and there were thousands of them. We started sneaking through on the left, and the troops all seemed to pass us, going to the real front line. We went a few hundred metres, all the time troops on our right and left. Suddenly we noticed that a squad saw us. It was a big squad of at least 30 Nazis. We, yet again, dove into a ditch, but that didn't work last time. When they saw Sarge they recognized him from the base, and signalled some more divisions. A tiger tank was rolling up, so we sprinted.
This tiger tank was modified to have a stronger cannon but no machine gun, but the troops were still shooting, and the sound of the tiger tank firing at the ground behind us was pretty scary. Now I know where all the ditches came from. A bullet grazed my face, and took some of my face with it. I was bleeding lightly, but Sarge got shot in the leg, so me and Rudolf picked him up and continued. They were closing in on us, and a halftrack with a machine gun was about to start firing. This is it. All that for nothing...

But then a Sherman tank emerged from behind a building and shot the halftrack, blowing it up immediately. We ran into the building, and found a radio, with an operator. We sent our info, then ran out of the building just in time to see the Sherman blow up. It weakened the Tiger and took out the regular troops, but then I noticed a few dozen of the best tanks roll up. It was what we were worried about, the entire time...

The 116th division. A panther shot, and missed but blew up the building behind us. A few armored cars fired off their machine guns, and their bullets were headed right for us. This is it. But they were special bullets, probably tranquilizers. We got hit, but didn't feel much pain. Me, Sarge and Rudolf looked at each other, but upon looking around we noticed that there were troops all around us, and among them, Gerhard Graf von Schwerin, the leader of the 116th. He said " Halt and yield to the 116th panzer division. " So we did. Next thing we knew, we were on a freight train to a German concentration camp.

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