chapter 1 part 3- first blood

A godly light flashed in front of Rudi. Was this heaven? He couldn't feel anything, and his whole body was just one tingling sensation. Who's face did he see? Was it father's? No... it wasn't.. it was the Feldwebel..... Hans! It was Hans! Was he shouting? He must be, he seemed worried enough. Where the hell is Klemens? His ears were still ringing, he couldn't make out a damn thing that Hans was saying, but he knew he had to stand. He was far more unsteady than what he had been at the beginning of the attack, his knuckles had turned a stark white and he could feel a gentle trickle of blood down the back of his leg, but he knew what was required of him. He would prove to his comrades of less than twelve hours that he was a true Landser and worthy of his Aryan status.

The whole Russian assault had somehow, despite the depressing simplicity and clumsy nature with which it was carried out, managed to achieve the element of surprise. The Germans, taking solace in the assumption that they had weathered a routine bombardment had been lax in those few crucial minutes that came before the whirlwind of the assault. Now, the whole Partisan formation, a ragbag assortment probably around a thousand or so strong in the same fashion in which the Pagans of the Baltic charged towards the Teutons so six centuries previous, attacked their opponent's line. Unlike their Slavic ancestors, however, the latest opponents to the “Master” Race were far more placed to cause death to their enemies.

As they charged across the golden rye fields, the moon and the fires illuminating their desperate assault, they opened up a vicious but also inaccurate storm of fire. Many carried outdated and varied weapons that were difficult to handle in anything other than a stationary, and hence vulnerable, position. The more fortunate of the group carried Ppsh-41's and other weapons of German manufacture, and from this motley assembly of arms they poured a horrific rain of lead into the German line. Some men, probably those who had only recently joined or were criminals of some sort, carried no weapons other than scythes, advancing towards their enemy with the same silhouette that the armies of Gustavus and Tilly did at Leipzig and so many more blood-slick fields, their weapons glinting menacingly in the night.

The Germans, however, were not unblooded recruits and soon fought back with their own whirlwind of automatic death. The constant chatter of machine gun fire was the defining sound, broken intermittently by an order or the sharp bark of a rifle. The shells had begun to fall once more, far less thick and far worse aimed than beforehand, but they were mostly ignored by the men of the Wehrmacht who were fully engrossed in the deadly skirmish. They were the best army that had ever walked the earth, and they knew it. They were the ones who had rewrote the rules of war, it was they who had humbled the West in six weeks and it was they who were now annihilating the Pan-Slavic dream in the dark steppes of the East.

Rudi pulled the firing bolt back for an uncountable and ever growing time. How long had they been in combat? A minute at most he thought. It was far more intoxicating than it had been even in the first hectic seconds of bombardment and he was finally becoming more attuned to it's many demands. He was finally reunited with Klemens, who had looked very unimpressed and far more anxious than Rudi had dreamt possible when Hans told him how close the shell had been to the pair. The two brothers stood side by side now and were, to the surprise of the rest of the section who cast anxious glances at them every few seconds, performing admirably. They were both crouched in the shallow trench with blood trickling down it's sides and interior, aiming, firing and ejecting in perfect unison. If one missed, a very rare outcome to the man who was in their sights, then the other would very quickly finish their target off.

But, as the armies of England had learned in the fifteen century and those of preceding generations had discovered, fire-power would only stop an enemy who could be held at arms length. Even now, the Partisans continued to close the gap, and the call to fix bayonets was going up all along the line. Rudi fumbled as he tried to reach his long, eighteen inch blade, all the while keeping one eye on the approaching enemy. He cursed strongly as the shaking began again, and he struggled on evermore to fix his accursed blade. Beside him, Klemens had already fixed his blade and was still trying to pick off more Untermensch. Rudi cackled bitterly, the b******s were like ants, killing one more wasn't going to make any difference.

The damned scum were dropping into the trench now. Some were impaled on the long glinting steel of Rudi's comrades, but others were able to avoid their impending death and throw themselves into a far more... unforgiving form of battle. He knew it would only be a matter of seconds before he, Klemens and the rest of the section were embroiled in the same kind of killing that even now was consuming ever more Soldaten. He patted Klemens' shoulder, a small affectionate gesture that was worlds away from summing up the time and care the two had invested in one another, but it was better than nothing. Then slowly, like the rest of his section, he faced the landscape of this brutal skirmish, where men already lay and many more would join them by it's conclusion, and prepared to fight for survival.

The two sides were now embroiled in their brutal war, and both were slaughtering each other barbarically. On the extreme right, an MG42 platoon remained in action and was rapidly enveloping the whole of the Partisan attack. The section of scythemen who were sent to take them out were strewn in amongst the long grass 30m from the platoon's position. A mortar platoon had silenced their Soviet counterparts and were now raining tiny meteorites amongst the tightly packed ranks of the attackers, tearing massive lumps of raw flesh off many unfortunate soviets.

But despite such a prodigious display of fire-power, the skirmish would be won or lost in the shallow, cramp environment of the slit trench. Here the odds were far more balanced; a man's survival came down to skill as well as what weapon he carried. The Wehrmacht man; armed with the vast host of automatic weapons Krupp and Schmeisser had created as well as his gleaming 18 inch bayonet, was faced by the partisan; armed with a motley assortment of mainly outdated and user-hazardous weapons but also equipped with an almost unmatchable spirit of self sacrifice that had been meticulously exploited by the higher echelons of Soviet society.

It was to this backdrop, with the screams of the dying and falling shells, laced with the whip of tracer, that the two formations attacked each other. The hard won experience that many of the Germans had bought at such a high price in blood were negated by the partisan's near invulnerability to the traditional elements of the Human psyche. The environment they fought in; one where the boundaries were the blood slick earth walls, where the ground was thick with the writhing and screaming bodies of the dying and dead, and where survival came down to tenacity and skill alone; was horrifyingly reminiscent of the one their father's fought in two decades previously and it was no less brutal than the predecessor. The two sides continued to fight on, the storm unabated and still full of unspent energy. Slowly, the Germans gained the upper hand, but at a steep price.

Rudi faced his opponent, a rough looking brute with a vicious, deep scar running from his left temple all the way to the side of his crusty, worn lips. He was eying Rudi carnivorously, his pupils darting all around the young soldier's weapons and uniform, and it was only then that he noticed the magnitude of the hatred that burned bright in the man's pained complexion. A menacingly large, curved knife was griped firmly in his hand, a beaten revolver was held at his waist. He lunged for Rudi, his bulk propelling him forwards far faster than the inexperienced young German had anticipated, and the Ukrainian's massive frame was soon hurtling towards him. He barely had time to bring his rifle upwards, away from the slick ground, before his puny adolescent frame was flying through the air before coming to an abrupt and hard-hitting stop against curved and completely destroyed edge of the trench, some ten metres from where Rudi had originally been standing.

The beast now saw his chance to finish off his young and morbidly outclassed opponent, and he lunged forward like a serpent, going for the killer blow, the wicked knife still pointed at Rudi's exposed neck. The man plunged downwards on him, and instinctively the young German brought his hard boot up into the man's genitalia causing him to growl ever more intensely, but more importantly meaning that the killer blow was by the tinniest of margins avoided. The knife was now lodged above Rudi's head, and a small trickle of blood was now making it's way down his almost unblemished features.

The Soviet was now writhing horribly as he attempted to regain his weapon, all the while jabbing Rubi in the ribs as powerfully as ever. Rudi was still regretting actually being able to fix his bayonet, and was desperately trying to unlatch it from the socket, finding the task impossible due to his... unusual circumstances. He was now racking through his pockets crazily, all the while lashing out at the man's exposed back and sides. He had finally found something now, what was it?... A knife! Yes, a knife! He'd finish the b*****d now, Rudi grinned sadistically, even as he drew the meagre penknife from his pocket and lodged it firmly between the Slav's ribs. The man screamed bestially, and his quest to regain his own weapon became ever more desperate.

“The damn Slav”, Rudi murmured, even as the man finally pulled the knife from the clinging surrounding of the trench wall and proceeded to smash it against the top of his Stalhelm. Rudi suddenly felt weak and dizzy, and pulling his own, far more insignificant knife from the man's ribs seemed like an almost impossible task, but even as he prepared to stab him once more, if only to save himself, the man had pinned him to the floor. Rudi frantically tried to reach any weapon that he could; his rifle, his bayonet, his penknife, he even tried to bite the man (something he quickly repulsed at and spat any remaining blood that he had managed to extract back at his assailant).

The man grinned as he lined his knife up with the German's heart, revealing a crooked and shattered row of teeth that seemed as if they had been barbarically broken. Rudi did not know quite why they were like that, but he certainly found them revolting and in every way The man slowly began to lower the knife, his eyes overflowing with the same sadism and hatred that Rudi's had only seconds earlier, and no matter now desperately and frantically the young German squirmed and fought back, or even tried to remove himself from the path of the blade plunging ever closer to him. Their eyes locked together, neither man able or willing to tear his own away from the other's, and then slowly, the man toppled over, a neat whole shot several inches into his upper spine.

Rudi struggled to move the unmoving and rapidly cooling corpse away from him, before two faces appeared. One was scanning him desperately and seemed to be half crazed with worry; the other was far more collected and calm. Rudi soon recognised the pair; it was Klemens and Hans! One of them must have saved him... he must thank them both later, that was If he could somehow remember to after this hectic night. They hauled the body away from on top of him, and the young and terrified German quickly clawed his way from the constricting dead weight.

God Almighty, the battlefield was a mess, Rudi muttered inwardly. Everywhere, the Wehrmacht men were finally pushing the ragged remains of the Russian assault back across the churned and corpse littered field, were they ran furiously for dear life. Many would only hold onto that precious gift for a few more seconds before their backs were ripped open by a short, concentrated burst of machine gun fire, before their lifeless body would drop onto the soil they held in such a revered place and would now become their final resting place. But as Rudi was now seeing all too well, it had not been a one sided fight. Many Germans were now lying in and around their trenches, some screaming, some moaning, some silent. The clean up had already began, the experienced men of the Heer treating the dead of both sides admirably, whilst they nurtured their injured comrades with a the most tender, loving care imaginable.

Rudi looked down at the man he had fought those few, scant seconds ago. Damn scum, he thought, as he spat blood and made Klemens (who was also examining the still corpse) look at him anxiously once more. The man must have been what, 25, Rudi guessed, and he was still unable to take on a raw recruit? It just went to show how right the Fuhrer had been, and it legitimized everything he had to say about the annihilation of such a low, undeveloped race. Rudi breathed deeply, his first taste of battle had been very much in-depth and fascinating, and whilst he yearned for yet more opportunities to prove himself against the Untermensch, something within him told him that opportunity would not be far away.

Hans, leading Rudi and Klemens through the now ruined trench system with all the agility and grace that would be expected from a Great War veteran once more at home in the abattoir-like labyrinth that was the trench system. Silently, and to Rudi's dislike a bit too sombrely he pointed out the bodies of both friend and undeserving foe, and how they lay together in a macabre dance that had been the last moments of their lives. He was silent as they left the trench, the pandemonium of the aftermath of the skirmish seemingly unnoticed by the veteran as he led a somewhat bewildered and over-inquisitive arrivals who were now beginning to see what battle was truly like.

By now, the trio had now been reunited with the rest of the section, and Hans seemed as if a great burden had been lifted from him when he saw all seven men uninjured. They each embraced in turn, and Kurt as well as Hans embraced the Baur brothers as well. The looks the rest of the section, Rudi noticed, was now different. It was not one of indifference or contempt, it was one of a newborn respect that had been created by the pair's actions in their first, shocking action. Almost as one entity, the section turned about, and walked slowly back towards their tents to continue to sleep, the dying inferno and the screams of the wounded fading away as each slowly re-entered the world.

Author's Note

any and all critique welcome.
Calgar