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Four Survivors
by Jokr

Henre's body vaporized when one of the shells lobbed at us by the approaching German tanks impacted off to the side, and set of a HE shell. All of us were hit by wet, sharp shrapnel, christened into War in the usual way.

Our cannon belched a heavy armor piercing shell, then another, then an impact lurched the 50mm gun from its mounts, its muzzle now into the sandbag wall. The bags, painted a camouflage green color, were oozing rivulets of sand as 'small arms' fire tore them open.

Not having a weapon larger than a pocket knife between the four of us, we decided to run away. In masse, we ran. This was stupid, but the German tanks were interested only in rubbing out our small vestige of defiance, and charged our broken gun.

I can only assume that the two loud explosions that we heard were tanks impacting the mine string. Maybe some day I'll find out.

Five minutes later, we came to a halt, and eyed each other, panting for breath. It was a beautiful day, from natures point of view. A fairly bad day to be a Frenchman recently routed from a snall defensive point.

The brush behind us cracked, and we heard a soldier coming up on us. The grass swayed to show his movement, and then a blur of motion as not a soldier but a dog came after us.

I have never seen a dog attack before, and the animal was frenzied as it leapt for Clark's throat. He managed to get an arm up in time, and then the four of us tried ineffectually to pull the dog off him as his arm was torn open. The Nazis had even put a spike collar on it, to ensure pain to anyone trying to pull the dogs neck.

Sometime later, after we'd bludgeoned the dog to death with rocks, Clark of all people began to try to dig a hole to bury the dog. The patriot, Jean Paul, confronted him calling him stupid. 'Look to your own, not some Nazi dog that wanted you dead.'

Clark merely said 'a dog is not a Nazi, its just a dog. I'm sad we had to kill it.' So we took ten minutes to bury a dog. Life, war and death gave us those ten minutes to be regular men again, for the last time.

Half an hour later, we were called prisoners of war. Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that an army preparing to invade a non German speaking land would be full of French speaking people. This was not the case, and we waited for some time. I had had some schooling in their language however, and somehow got across to our captors our names, and the name of our homes. This was dutifully recorded by a German officer, who thanked me for the information.

Five minutes later....

With a look of resignation, the officer executed Clark, having found him guilty of destruction of German property. The dog handler wanted us all killed on the spot, and kicked me repeatedly. I balled up, to try to protect my ribs. The officer got in his face, shouted for several minutes, and then slapped the man who was now crying.

This attended too, he explained to the three of us that we would be questioned and 'processed', whatever that meant, and then assigned work details inside the now burning city.

As I translated this as best I could to the other two, it was clear that they were also confused. The officer obviously was also, as to the source of our confusion.

I asked him how we would do our regular work while repairing the damage to our city.

'You will just have to work harder. A man can work two shifts in one day.'

I did not think that we would be paid for this, but was surprised to hear that cooperation would be rewarded. The tone of this remark made my skin crawl, and I was quite glad that the fact that we were all captured together in the forest had somehow been passed over for the time being.

'Your life will be hectic, and their will be changes. This town will have to be fixed, as our forces had to neutralize opposition inside the square.'

Ah. Some of the others had gotten to their positions also. I guess that was good.

We were walked down the road, past our smashed outpost and two, no four motionless tanks. Our gun was not as ineffectual as we'd thought! The temporary delight at the german army halted at our destroyed position, and we were walked on towards the outlying streets.

It was bizarre to walk on the road of a victorious nation, right into my home town; hands behind us, tied with cord - like countries do with criminals.