Chapter 14
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It was now early February, but I can't remember the exact date. I'm sure I was counting down the number of days left on my tour of duty, at least in theory. I had heard that some officers kept their soldiers longer than they were suppossed to. In particular jewish soldiers were far more likely to be kept past their time. Still, I had hope that come June I'd be sent home. Then Hamilton brought twelve of us, all jewish soldiers, on a recon mission. We were all dressed as civilians, but snipers still fired on us. I don't even know how they knew. Maybe they didn't, maybe the cold, the hunger, maybe they weren't that rational. Maybe they were just desperate to kill people and end the war. Three of us were killed, the rest of us retreated into whatever shelter we could find. Every time we tried to sneak out, we were fired upon. By the time the sun rose the next day, three more had died of starvation and frostbite. At this point Hamilton was getting desperate, he yelled out that he was coming out, wanted to try and negotiate a truce with their leader. This time he wasn't fired upon. None of us had much hope that he could actually reach any kind of understanding, but we were desperate. I had less than 120 days until my tour ended, it didn't seem that I'd live that long. But then a curious thing happened, Hamilton came back. They hadn't just shot him, could he have succeeded? He claimed that he'd reasoned with their leader, a young alien who had become squad leader only today, when his superior was killed. This squad leader promised to give our side a brief path to leave, but we had to be ready to leave in a few minutes. It made sense, they could have slaughtered us, but they knew that we'd kill a few of them first. Their squad leader didn't want to die anymore than we did, and he didn't want his men to die. Hamilton told us what path we would have to take, and to be ready in case they or some other snipers broke this truce and fired on us. But then, just before we left, their squad leader called out to us. It was the first time I ever heard his voice, although I would later become quite familiar with it. He yelled that it was an ambush, that Hamilton had made a seperate arrangement. Essentially he would lead us into an ambush, we'd all get killed, and Hamilton would become a prisoner of war. We expected that Hamilton would deny this, it was after all the enemy who was accusing him of this. But Hamilton just laughed and said "What did you expect? Did you think I was going to die for a bunch of jews?" And then, someone shot Hamilton in the head, killing him instantly. Of the six of us, after all of these years, I'm the only one who's still alive. Only I know for certain who killed Hamilton, and I ain't saying.
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We had heard rumors of how you advanced in the alien army by murdering your own superiors. That every officer is always looking over their soldiers, wondering which of their subordinates would murder them. But now, one of us had murdered their own superior. I had three confirmed kills since I came to Albany, possibly more but I'm okay with not knowing for certain. After hearing this gunshot, the aliens surprisingly didn't fire on us. We called to the that Hamilton was dead, but we didn't know what would happen next. The squad leader asked us to come out with our hands up, and we would become prisoners of war. We had heard of soldiers who surrendered to this enemy. Some were immediately shot, others treated fairly humanely and eventually released in prisoner exchanges. Like many other aspects of war, it was just blind dumb luck if you survived. Our only two options at this point were to surrender and take our chances, or to shoot at the aliens and die fighting, maybe take a few of them down with us. As much as we hated the aliens, our survival instincts mattered more to us. So we surrendered and became P.O.W.s. That was the first time I saw the alien squad leader. I couldn't pronounce his name in his tongue, but I would later call him David. Even with the mercy he showed us, I couldn't have known it at the time. But later, he and I would have a child together.