AN: So... you liked it? Good! You want more? Good! More you get. ww 2 nerd, I seriously doubt you can get the Red Army to get me, partially coz they don't exist anymore. But, should some vets be reading this (veeeeeeery doubtful) I'd better not take that chance :) so here you go, fresh off the keyboard. Caleb, I haven't played COD. Was intending on buying it, but I'm a bit short on cash. Not buying the new MOH soon, coz, well, the reason just mentioned + my PC would explode when I run it. On occasions I like blood and stuff, but again, I think the requirements are a bit to high for this 3-4 year old piece of junk :)
Damn, my word doesn't work, so I have to count the words manually :S (I like to keep the actual chapters 2000 words +) And I lost the grammar check etc. so expect some errors to have slipped past my scrutiny.
The Breach
I won't watch it anymore...
I won't watch you die...
I won't let you...
I will fight...
I totally screwed up on the beach. Why? I don't know. I just froze. It won't happen again. I won't allow it. This time, I will make it. You will. We will all make it out of this hell. "Fix bayonets!" Today, we will succeed. No German will stop us now. "Get ready!" Nothing will! "Charge!"...
After 24 agonizing hours of fighting we had secured the beach, silenced the heavy guns, smoked out the last resisting Germans and blown up every imaginable sort of defensive structure. Now we pushed forward into an area just past the cliffs of Normandy consisting of a true maze of natural barriers. Ridges, ditches and hedges lined every road. The Germans utilized these natural defenses masterfully, causing the many losses on our side to rise dramatically. Every time we took one ridge, they had pulled back to the next and sprayed our troops with a mix of artillery, mortars, machineguns and rifles. Of course, the extremely annoying habit of leaving behind lone snipers, hidden from view with great care, didn't make things easier for us.
Tucker and I had been reassigned to a new squad. As we slowly made our way through the difficult terrain we picked up some paratroopers. They had been dropped behind the lines before the main assault on the beaches to take key positions and keep the enemy occupied as we took them. I admired these men. The courage it must take to willingly allow yourself to be dropped in enemy territory with only the most basic weaponry. I heard of one unit who had to hold off enemy armored units with nothing but rifles and handguns. We were now slowly liberating small pockets of these elite troops so they could take the rest they so deserved.
Eventually we met up with a small group consisting of members of both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. They had been trying to take out two machinegun nests, and had only recently succeeded. Their method: one of the troopers had dropped his rifle and ran towards one of the guns screaming a war cry. Bet the gunner hadn't seen anything like it in his life, because even though he never stopped shooting not one bullet hit its mark. The gap was closed in seconds and the trooper had jumped in and slid his throat with a bayonet. The second gunner had tried to run for it but was gunned down by the others. After hearing the unbelievable story we decided to tag along with the group. Their Lieutenant, a guy named Muir, was having trouble walking. When he was in his manhole a grenade had exploded between the hard wall and the bag where his gas mask was stored. Though it wasn't an open wound, it caused a huge bruise and his bone was broken. He couldn't walk anymore as he could feel the ends of the bone slide against each other. We left him and continued to... well, we didn't really know.
We made good progress, sometimes taken under fire, but nothing serious. We met up with another gang of soldiers who had teamed up with a pair of Sherman tanks. They were trying to clear out some Germans further down the road. Suddenly one of the tank commanders came out and said he'd clear the way for us. He positioned his tank in a way so one of the tracks was in the ditch by the side of the road and drove up to the Germans. Most tried to run for cover but they were quickly put down by our fire. Others decided to stay in the ditch and were crushed when the tank drove through it, their screams echoing across the countryside. The rest of the Germans clearly couldn't take this and ran for it in random directions. Not one made it.
Our group decided to take a break at a farmhouse. We discovered a few barrels of wine in a shed and greedily poked holes in them with a knife. After drinking our worries away the war found us again, much to our regret. We spend the rest of the day fending off small scale assaults on our lines. As darkness set in we knew we were in for a hard battle. The long wait began, as we cautiously peered over the edges of our manholes. Suddenly I heard the low rumbling of a heavy duty engine in the distance. Watching closely I could swear I saw shadows moving about and then all hell broke loose.
The engine sound was from a Mark IV Panzer, and while this information sank in, its muzzle slowly turned towards our line. I ducked as low as I could and heard a deafening bang followed shortly by an equally deafening explosion. And another one... lucky for us we laid those mines earlier. As I popped up again shooting had started all over the place. The tank was burning only a few feet in front of me and the screams of the crew were clearly heard as they were cremated on the spot in their metal coffin. Those anti-tank mines really packed a punch. As I looked at it in horror, a German soldier came up from behind the tank and pointed his MP40 directly at me. I was quicker as I pumped him full of lead with my Thompson. My first real kill. For a moment I didn't know what to think. I just shot another human being. I killed. It was as if I didn't have control over my actions, like a reflex. I wasn't granted too long to ponder this as more soldiers came to their fallen comrades aid. They too fell victim to my submachine gun. Well, most of them anyway, and what was left was taken care of by Tucker, who was lying in a small trench not far from my position. As the battle intensified, grenades were thrown from one side to the other and bullets were flying through the air tearing up whatever it was they made contact with, be it wood, stone, or human flesh. As the battle went on the Germans disappeared as fast as they had shown up. Only by daybreak did we realize the true extend of this skirmish. A small group of only 24 U.S. troops had successfully repelled a full scale enemy counterattack on the allied lines. Out of the original 24 only 16 made it through the night. The stunning discovery however, was that those 24 had single-handedly taken out over 30 enemy soldiers and wounded countless more. After we rounded up the survivors and locked them up in the shed we continued in the general direction we thought was 'forward', or 'further inland'.
Off we went again, in search of the war. After another hour of walking through the wasteland that Normandy had been changed into we came across a small enemy convoy. They were reinforcements for the troops fighting the paratroopers. We attacked it, even if we were down to 16. No idea what those Germans thought, maybe they thought we were just the spearhead of a much larger force, but they ran. We couldn't believe our eyes. Two of us chased a small group of Germans down the field on the side of the road and eventually managed to shoot them just before they crawled over the ridge on the other side. It was a mistake. The main German force in the area just happened to be behind that ridge and as soon as our guys opened fire several MG42's popped up along the ridge and cut them down. We quickly took cover in the ditch by the side. Down to 14 now. One of our guys carried a radio, but the stupid thing only worked once every hour or so. After several tries he finally got it to work and called for reinforcements. We waited another 20 minutes before our main unit arrived on the scene. Now the chances were somewhat fair, with just about 200 men on our side and about 250 on the enemy's side. It didn't take long before the first order to attack came...
"Charge!" And up we went. It was a complete failure, despite the fact we actually did take the ridge from the Germans. Our ranks were decimated by enemy machinegun fire and mortar rounds going off in the middle of small groups of running soldiers, taking out dozens at a time. By the time we reached the ridge the enemy had retreated to the next. As we lay there, panting, I glanced at Tucker. I couldn't help but thinking of Sarge, and how he met his end. Such a fate awaited all of us... No, I can't think that way. It works quite demoralizing, so I can't if I want to live. I looked at Tucker again, thinking. I won't watch it anymore... I won't watch you die... I won't let you... I will fight... I totally screwed up on the beach. Why? I don't know. I just froze. It won't happen again. I won't allow it. This time, I will make it. You will. We will all make it out of this hell. "Fix bayonets!" Today, we will succeed. No German will stop us now. "Get ready!" Nothing will! "Charge!" There was that order again. Now, bayonets fixed firmly to our barrels, we charged again. We ran as if our lives depended on it, because quite frankly, they did. We went over the ridge and charged straight into the enemy's sights. And into reach of their long range artillery. We didn't stop, not even when limbs went flying after their owners were blasted into oblivion by enemy shelling. We didn't stop after the forward ranks got cut to pieces by enemy machinegun fire. And we certainly didn't stop after we found out we had advanced so fast only three quarters of the enemy forces had managed to retreat, leaving the remainders to our bayonets. We didn't rest a bit, for the order came to charge the next ridge immediately. This repeated itself a few more times before the remaining Germans ran out of ridges and retreated into a nearby village. We found out first hand that they were masters in fortifying villages after we charged it, causing even more losses. The officer in charge decided it would be best if we rested a while before attempting another go at the village. Thus we waited and licked our wounds.
The day after we set out with one goal in mind: to liberate that town from the German occupation. In the early morning we sneaked our way right up to the entrance using the cover of darkness and surprised some sentries before they could raise the alarm. The few paratroopers that had decided to stay with us turned out to be masters at silent killing. Though that made perfect sense, since they usually operate deep in enemy territory. When the sun came up the Germans awoke and our cover was blown. Fierce fighting broke out all over the place, as soldiers of both sides engaged in close-quarter combat. As Tucker and I cleared out a building on the corner of the main street we looked out the window and saw a Tiger tank drive down the road. It was heading straight for a group of troopers, who were desperately shooting it with light weapons. We both pulled a grenade and dumped it right on the back of the tank as it drove past our window, after which we jumped for cover. Seconds later they exploded setting the gasoline tanks on the rear of the tank on fire. The crew tried to crawl out of the hatches but were sprayed as soon as they opened them. Building by building, street by street, the town fell into our hands.
Things were finally starting to look up to us, as the Germans hastily retreated from the Normandy battlegrounds. Tucker and I had been in awe of the skills and abilities of the Paratroopers and decided to sign up for the 101st Airborne, who were in desperate need of replacements after the battle for Normandy. Happily received, we were given a quick training in basic tactics and jumps, after which we were officially Paratroopers. When we joined our division, we were seen by the veterans as nothing more then fillers, canonfodder. This soon changed as Tucker began telling how we got into the war and we soon developed a mutual respect with the hardened veterans. As Paris came into reach, everyone was certain Hitler's Third Reich was crumbling. Nothing could be further from the truth. As our army's advanced North, Hitler and his generals were planning what would be the last convulsions of the Third Reich. And, unknown to us, they would be far more violent than anything we had seen before...
AN: And so ends another tale of... never mind. Did you like it? Personally, I think it's a lot better then the first chapter, but what do you think?
Mwahahahaha! Victory is mine! I used my brothers PC to count the length of this chapter and I'm happy to say this is the longest chapter I have ever written. This chapter counted 2170 words, whereas the first one counted 1947 (and with that I mean the story part, not counting the AN). With that I kept a promise I made myself to only write chapter in excess of 2000 words. And now, just for fun, here is the total amount of words including AN and such… 4763 words! Now please keep those reviews coming, I like to see people care ;)
WeirdDutchGuy