I've actually never played 'World At War'. I got to know Reznov through 'Black Ops'. This is more of a general WWII story after all, inspired by documentaries, books, and poems.
The icy winds roared below the dim, dreary skies. Each gust felt like a thousand knifes running straight through you. Reznov was no stranger to the cold, but even he couldn't bare this frozen hell. Not long ago, he witnessed a comrade being blown off his feet, back-flipping three times through the blizzard before landing.
Reznov strode towards the frozen, hollow grounds. Considering all the commotion he heard at this distance, the cemetery seemed especially busy today.
A scoped Mosin-Nagant rifle rested against Reznov's waist. It wasn't always his; he had no rifle or weapon of any kind to begin with. Soldiers were always shown getting their rifles in the propaganda films, but in the first of many divisions he had served in, there was only one rifle per every five men. He hoped this would only be whilst they were in training or on the way to the front, but they were never given new weapons. Their only source was the dead.
Reznov walked through the cemetery gates and entered the crowded burial grounds.
Sleds confiscated from children were pulled along; bodies lay on each of them. The gravediggers were weak and dieing from hunger; one had collapsed in the grave he had dug. The coffins had all been burnt for fuel; the bodies were wrapped in grubby cloth instead. This winter, much of the dead could not be buried; the few that could were not buried alone. It was getting very common for a thousand people to be thrown into a single unmarked grave and be forgotten.
Reznov came to a halt before another body, a friend he had seen die only yesterday. From beneath the black grimy cloth, a hand reached out at the sky, frozen stiff and with no sign of peace. Like so many others here, the man wished to come back. He wanted to return to this icy hell, to the bread made of sawdust and glue, and to the atrocious sieges that devoured this city piece by piece. The comrade rested, but not in peace.
Countless bodies were stacked in piles taller than the cemetery walls. So far, almost 20-million countrymen had died in this war. There was hardly a family in Russia that hadn't already been affected. The better-equipped German forces were running over them so quickly, that the longer trips for their supply trucks were becoming greater obstacles than any resistance they encountered.
The military of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was largely comprised of farmer boys given a rifle and a pair of boots. Many of them didn't know what this war was about. Countries outside of the USSR were like other planets to them, and they were under invasion by aliens they had never before laid eyes on.
Flocks of gravediggers and morticians scampered by Reznov like branded cows. Men bumped each other in confusion as they ran to where they were needed. They were disorganized, a sight not uncommon.
The stench of confusion wrecked every bit of Reznov's first battle with the Third Reich. The Germans had broken through their lines, and panic broke out. No one knew where they were, where the enemy was, or what they should do. No orders were given. There was no one to give any orders. Any ranking officers they had before the war disappeared during the Bolshevik's Revolution, as with anyone else with even the tiniest political power. Like Reznov, what few officers there were had been promoted only recently. All they had to do was survive.
Reznov noticed a sole body lying on its own in a corner of the cemetery. It was a boy, a German boy. Perhaps he was brought here by mistake, and then tossed into the corner when the gravediggers saw his face. Frozen in the boy's hand was a crumbled photo of his Führer. Lines drawn in blood were smeared over Hitler's eyes. Thunderous words Reznov could not read were written at the bottom of the paper, but he didn't need to read them to understand the boy.
Even for ordinary Germans, Hitler's personal appearance was thoroughly repellent. The epileptic behavior, the wild gesticulations and foaming at the mouth, the alternately shifty and staring eyes… Even those that acclaimed him would avoid asking him for a light if they met him in the street. As of late, some Germans were even beginning to reassess their opinions of the Führer. Some were daring enough to accuse Hitler of leading their Fatherland to ruin.
Whether they were Germans or Russians, Nazis or Soviets, the rising mounds of pale, tapered shapes no longer fazed Reznov, as long as he didn't know them. He slowly turned away from the boy… the enemy … the German.
Do not count days. Do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.
Reznov had heard the Red Army's official decree countless times.
Kill the German.
Their land... their people... their blood…
This is the cry of your Russian Earth. Kill… the German.
Those unforgiving words echoed colder than the frozen hells.
Kill… the German.
In contrast to the usual action/humor flavor, this brief story focuses on inner-actions and emotions like a bitter poem. If you found it boring because of this, understand that this different approach was intentional for better or worse.
I know this was very short, but compressing a lot of content within fewer words was what I was going for. After all, a good story says a lot with or without a high word-count. To be honest, this brief entry has more to it than 'The Ranger', despite their drastic differences in length.
I just wanted to get this out of my system. Given the small number of fictions in the Call of Duty section, I don't expect a lot of people to find this anyways.