Duncan POV

Duncan creeps along the thick forests of northern Germany with a Type 100 machine gun in his dirty hands and his brothers all around him. Well, they weren't his brothers, since they had once been complete strangers before World War II started, but now they felt like it. After all, they had all been through so much together… so much misery, torture, despair, and horror like nobody could even imagine. Duncan shakes his head to rid himself of all thoughts, focusing himself on the task at hand. His machine gun pointed forward, his eyes expertly scan the trees around them, looking for… looking for… looking for what, exactly? His enemies? Who were his enemies? The troops had been ordered to shoot the Nazis, the Japanese, the Italian. They were, after all, known as the Axis Powers, the bad-guys, the enemies. But Duncan didn't even know them. They were strangers, unknowns. How was he expected to kill them? Just because some big government guy said they were bad? That maybe their country's leaders had a wrong yet convincing way of doing things, so the confused people who followed them that only wanted help were automatically labeled bad?

He shakes his head once more. Stop thinking, he inwardly warns himself, Because once you start, you realize how fucked up this war shit is. You realize how you don't know how you got where you are, you don't know where you're going, and you don't know what to do anymore. His friend Thomas reaches out and brushes back a long veil of leafy green vines draped down from a thick tree branch. All twelve of the fellow troops in Duncan's infantry cautiously step into a clearing thick with weeds, trees, mud, and rocks. They all sweep their guns over the underbrush, waiting for anything to shoot. Anything. Something, so this painstaking nervousness can disappear and the horrible surprise can be over with already.

Suddenly, a crashed plane comes into view, smashed against a thick tree trunk and hissing a thick column of ashy-black smoke in the air. All of the soldiers in the US infantry peer forward, and they all take a collective breath as they see the American flag plastered on the cold gray metal. Travis, another of Duncan's close friends, steps up to the plane to check it out. Half of the infantry steps forward so Travis wouldn't be vulnerable to any surprise attacks, and the other half keeps their distance to watch their backs.

"Those German bastards shot another plane down." Travis takes a tentative step on a large boulder next to the plane and peeks in the shattered window at the tangled American body. "But this one looks like it's snarled up on something… Shit! We're dead!" Travis shouts, diving off the rock and onto the ground. Travis was covering his head while the plane immediately explodes in a blast of orange flames, and Duncan squints his eyes against the blast of heat.

The shouts of Germans float through the air all around the clearing, and Duncan's infantry backs into a nervous circle. Duncan puts his back to Thomas, and they turn in a slow circle, guns at the ready. Suddenly, Germans leap from trees and run out from the forest, shooting at the Americans. "Ambush!" one soldier alerts the others. The rapid sound of gunshots pierce the air, and flying shrapnel whizzes by at lightning speeds.

A German jumps from a high tree branch and lands steadily on his feet a few yards away from Duncan, whose thumb instinctively presses down hard on the machine gun's trigger. The machine gun kicks back repeatedly, like a metallic woodpecker hammering his shoulder, and his arms flex to keep the gun steady enough to aim. In less than a second or two, the German was lying dead on the ground, four scarlet bullet holes in his chest.

But Duncan didn't care. He was numb. Numb to the pain, the guilt, the fear. He's seen so much in the war… And this was nothing.

Duncan used to have to tell himself stories. He'd have to make up imaginary stories in his head. Every time he'd kill someone, he'd think, Oh, that guy was a rapist. Or a criminal, a druggie… Anything to justify what he had just done. He would re-write the man's whole past in his mind, making the man sound like he would've been better off dead. Even though he had no idea… No idea whatsoever. He'd killed a man; one of the few dozens that Duncan had killed by now, two months or so into the war.

But now was different. He's figured out that it takes too much time to think. So don't fucking think. How much can happen in a second? Tons. Cities can get bombed, friends can be killed, tanks can destroy ten-story buildings… So don't think. Just do it.

"To act is easy; to think is hard."
- Goethe

Over Duncan's shoulder, Thomas just shot down two Germans from tree stands in the leaves overhead. One of his fellow comrades tussles with a German, both of their guns accidentally tossed to the ground, before the German is finally stabbed in the neck with a pocket knife. He falls to the ground, groaning and bleeding to death. Despite the sounds of the soon-to-be-dead man's moans and the flickering of the orange flames as they slowly burned away the plane, the clearing was perfectly quiet.

"That was a quick ambush," one of Duncan's leaders, Captain Roebuck, comments. The infantry huddles into a group, assessing the damage. Two of their men lay dead, one of them face-down in a puddle of mud and the other one was lying over a clump of fern. The eight or so Germans that held the ambush also lay dead, lying in various unnatural positions on the ground. The rusty stench of blood was beginning to filter through the air. Travis was limping towards the group, and Duncan puts his arm around his pal.

Travis was more than just a friend. Thomas was Duncan's best friend in this whole mess. But Travis… Travis was like Duncan's guardian angel, his savior. He was always watching out for Duncan, who was just a mere 16 years old. Duncan had lied about his age to get drafted, since he looked two years older than his actual age. When he told Travis this, it was almost like Travis' new mission to get the teen home safe and sound. Travis himself wasn't even that old; he was twenty-three years old with a pregnant girlfriend back home, but he still looked out for Duncan.

"We just need to get to Berlin," Captain Roebuck continues, "There we'll hopefully be able to take over Kirovsky Factory No. 501, which specializes in making weapons for the German, Japanese, and Italian army."

"Yessir!" the infantry thunders, including Duncan. Nobody went against the captain's orders, or they were basically a traitor… even if they thought they were doing something good for their side, or that their idea was better than their leader's. Most often, if you went against orders, it hurt your side for the worse.

"Split into groups of three. We'll surround the factory from every angle, and more US infantrymen will meet us there for backup," Captain Roebuck drones on.

"Yessir!"

Captain Roebuck goes on to list all of the groups, and Duncan ends up being paired with Travis and Thomas, obviously. Captain Roebuck tries to pair the men up with their friends; the people who they naturally "click" with, and could work better in teams with.

"We're heading three degrees to the north. Walk for ten minutes and Berlin should be there. If you don't wind up in Berlin… so God help you. Move out!" Captain Roebuck shouts. The men dive into the underbrush, boots stomping through the tall grasses as they dispersed.

Duncan hugged his gun to his chest, crashing through the droopy bushes and ducking under low tree branches. Travis was in front of him, and Thomas was behind him. He digs his big hand into the small pocket of his camouflaged army uniform and retrieves a dirt-encrusted compass that at one time used to be shiny bronze. He holds the compass flat on his palm, but the glass cover immediately fogs up in the extreme humidity of the wetland. He swipes his thumb over the glass, clearing it up. He squints at the shaky, red needle before it fogs over again.

"Goddamn humidity," Duncan murmurs.

"Spit on it," Thomas urges. Taking his advice, Duncan spits onto the glass cover and wipes his thumb over it. The streaks of his saliva keep the glass case clear just long enough to tell which direction they were traveling in. "A bit to the left," Thomas reads over his shoulder.

They stomp through the forest for about ten minutes, each of them counting to sixty multiple times in their head to keep track. Trees start to disappear, and the humidity drastically decreases. Roads start to appear, although they were hardly roads anymore. More like a crumbled mess of concrete rubble. But they followed it anyway. Whenever buildings started to appear, Travis announced, "Berlin. We made it."

Buildings started to rise up around them, and the three men were sure to stick to the alleys and side-roads. The blank windows seemed ominous and threatening, though nobody seemed to be watching them. The city seemed deserted, but it wasn't, because their mission was to invade a building that was obviously inhabited by the enemy. Black curtains were drawn over the windows to block the light so American bombers couldn't find the cities in the black of night. The bleak windows looked awkward and ungainly in the broad daylight. Or, what would have been daylight if not for the thick gray clouds that stretched across the expanse of the sky.

"Kristallnacht," Travis whispers as their heavy boots crunch over shards of broken glass lying in the street. Practically every other store had shattered windows and merchandise spilling out into the streets. Bright red swastikas, the Nazi symbol, were crudely painted on the wooden shop doors. The paint had dripped from the swastika in haggard lines that looked like dripping blood, like it had been painted in a frantic rush. "The night of broken glass."

"What's that?" asks Thomas in a whisper. Even though Duncan was two years younger than his friend, he seemed to know loads more than him. In fact, Duncan had much more common sense in general. He was raised rough, by an alcoholic father and a feeble mother with a drug addiction; Duncan was surprised they hadn't just dumped him for adoption, treating him the way they had. He knew how to fist-fight like a kickboxer, hand-roll a perfect cigarette, and how to give homemade tattoos all by the age of twelve. The only person in his life who really seemed to love him was his grandma, but he called her ma, since she was more of a mother to him than Emily, his actual mother. Too bad he only saw his ma about twice or three times a year.

"It's Anti-Semitism at it's finest," Duncan explains, "Anti-Semitism is hatred of the Jews, by the way. Nazi mobs basically planted coordinated attacks on Jewish homes and especially stores owned by Jews," Thomas explains, motioning towards the ransacked, abandoned shop windows. "It was mainly led by the SS and Hitler Youth, but many Germans just joined it. Judging on the massive amounts of debris and little outside activity, I'd have to say it happened just yesterday."

For once, Thomas was silent. They continue along the outskirts of town until they happen upon a large pile of burnt rubble. It spanned about the length of one of the apartment buildings around it, even though those buildings looked untouched. So it couldn't have possibly been a bombing of the city. It was probably a Jewish building before it was burned down, Duncan thinks, A temple, maybe?

A minute or so later, Travis stops ahead of Duncan. The three of them stop as Travis points out the sign that says "Kirovsky Factory No. 501" on the corner of the huge building across the street from them. Duncan crouches behind a trash can in an alley as Thomas and Travis hide in spots near him. As Duncan is loading bullets into his trusty Type 100 machine gun, he hears a voice. He looks up to see Thomas.

Travis holds up a finger, points it at himself, then points it at Duncan. He nods, knowing Travis was wanting to trade guns with him, and he lifts his gun. They both toss their guns across the alleyway to each other, the guns not with more than an inch between them when they're tossed past each other in midair. Duncan catches his gun with one hand and smirks.

"Duncan, I need you to climb up that fire escape to the top floor and snipe across the street into the Kirovsky Factory. You're the only one with the steady enough hands to do it," Travis orders. Duncan's smirk fades away. He was being given the job of a sniper.

Every night, he had been working on carving wooden skulls in his bunk, late at night, with his Swiss Army pocketknife. The other guys in his barrack seem to admire his carvings; so far, Duncan has made four skulls for some of the men in his infantry. But once everybody falls asleep, Duncan pulls out his prized skull. It had elaborate detail on every aspect of it: from the teeth in its jaw to the jaw line curving upwards to the smooth and empty eye-sockets. He wasn't giving that skull away.

Yes, it was true, he had very steady hands and fingers. It was a requirement, if one was to be a woodcarver. So one could say he was destined to be a sniper.

Duncan takes his Scoped Springfield M1-A rifle and slings the strap over his shoulder. He reaches up and pulls himself onto the fire escape, slowly climbing up the creaky steps. Every time he would pass a window, he'd hold his breath and wait anxiously for the curtain to snap aside and a Nazi to shoot him. But it never happened.

One flight of stairs below the top level, Duncan's breath caught in his throat as he noticed the curtains were gone on the windows. But then he saw the singed edges, and how they were burned half-off. He carefully steps forward and peers into the only dusty window that wasn't broken.

Dead bodies. Everywhere.

But nothing else, so Duncan keeps going. He had a job to do. At the very top of the stairs, he gently sets the sniper gun on the floor of the fire escape. His fingers grip the bottom of the shattered window and slowly slides it up, not daring to try to crawl through the broken window and most likely cut himself on the glass. When it makes a loud squeaking noise, he just slams it up quickly and grabs the gun. Pointing the gun ahead of him, he climbs into the room and scopes it out.

The room looked like an office, with a wooden desk, metal filing cabinet, and a large bookcase. Papers were littered over the floor, singed all around the corners, probably from lit Molotov cocktails. After checking in the closets and under all the furniture, he goes into the next room, his boots crunching over the glass that was just… everywhere. This was a kitchen, with a small ice box, metal sink, wood stove, and multiple wood cabinets. A soapy bin of wet clothes left in mid-wash was abandoned in a corner, and a wringer stood next to it. At the round kitchen table, a woman was slumped across the desk, dead. Her husband was collapsed on the floor, also dead. There was a shallow hole in the floor, with black smears around it and small holes punctured into the wallpaper. Grenade. Duncan steps towards her and peeks over the open newspaper on the table that she was laying over. The date was yesterday's date, November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht.

A middle-aged couple must have lived here, Duncan thinks. He steps into the next room in the small apartment, a bedroom. There was one wide cot, a wooden dresser, and a small desk. Duncan opens a door that was, strangely, closed and steps into what he had thought would've been a closet. But instead, it was another bedroom. The husband and wife slept in different beds? Different bedrooms, too?

He walks around the room. There was a cot, much smaller than the one in the previous bedroom. There was also a dresser, a desk, and a mirror smeared with ash nailed to the wall. A fringed rug covered the dusty wooden floor, and glass was sprayed everywhere. A brick was amid the glass shards, probably thrown through the window by the Nazis. Duncan kneels in front of the window and props the nose of the gun on the windowsill. The black curtain around the shattered window was halfway burned off. He inserts a few cartridges of bullets into the gun, and peers into the scope, looking into the windows of the Kirovsky Factory across the street. With the scope, he could see the silhouettes of Germans across the street in between the crosshairs. Duncan hears something sliding across the wood floor, a sound like glass scraping across hardwood. He turns his gaze away from the scope, away from the windows across the street, and he slowly turns around to face the empty room.

Duncan had a feeling he wasn't alone.