Ch7 - And Then There Were Five

Jason Grace didn't know what to do.
The first battle was easy. He and his men had managed to execute the plan to perfection, the trap being sprung masterfully and their opponents succumbing to the excellent tactics of their commanders.
The next thing he knew, Thalia had sent him this terrifying message that Jackson was injured, and that they were down one Junior Officer too. Jason had resolved fairly quickly that the best decision to make would be to pull back towards the forest, in order to Rendezvous with the Canadians on the other side of the road, hidden somewhere deep within the trees.
It wasn't every day that things went so badly wrong, but of course, the law of averages had to catch up with everyone, and Jason Grace, for all the good he had done for those around him, was not exempt.
The deafening roar of Tank tracks filled his ears, having come up in a crescendo from a low murmur. The hellish machines of war were still not in sight.

A full Armoured Reconnaissance unit - four more companies the size of the one that had assaulted their now weakened position mere hours ago - was advancing on the weary, no - exhausted allied troops.
This would not be a battle.
It would be a massacre.

Scribbling down a note for the runner to take with him, Jason yelled desperately for his men, hoping to attract the Canadian Corporal - Zhang - in the process, bringing together the twenty soldiers and their French companions together. After all, there was safety in numbers, was there not?
Jason ducked for cover as three bullets thudded into the tree behind him, one clipping the top of his helmet, the resulting 'ding' sounding like his own death knell.
Snapping out of his reverie, Jason sprinted out of the cover of the trees, his me in tow and onto the other side of the road, a rather more densely packed forest, and lines up with traps, the location of which only he and Zhang knew.
Following his safe trail, Jason leapt into the air, clinging onto a tree and scrambling up it, clambering onto the rudimentary firing platform constructed by the French carpenter who had served Thalia so well in her time undercover in Caen.

Now, the group of twenty men under Jason's command were free - able to run like the wind, mere shadows flitting between the trees -
Or so he thought.

Their freedom was brought crashing down around their ears as one tree, then another, collapsed. Just like that, the ancient pines being felled instantaneously by the damning finality of a Tank shell, the 12cm cannons of the Panthers making short work of the Allied vanguard's escape route, and removing no less than eight of Jason's men from the fray, three being caught in the explosions, a further three falling victim to the brutal shrapnel that was the debris thrown out by the destruction of those mighty trees. A further three fell to their demises, their balance being thrown off by the sheer force of the explosions.

Jason, for his part, couldn't see any of it, his back to the action as he, like his men, fled. Survival was his only goal, and he hated himself for it.

Down went two more, this time to a rattling burst of gunfire which tore through the dense foliage of the trees on which their ropes had been set up. It was by no means a complex system, merely four ropes - two to hold for support, and another two on which planks were haphazardly placed. There was neither enough wood nor enough time for them to do much more, and so the path was a myriad of hazards.
Small mercies, however, did exist, and a mighty explosion sounded through the trees, a tank falling victim to a landmine, its infantry escort going much the same way.

Another resounding clang rang out, as one of Zhang's bear traps clamped shut, the unfortunate German howling in pain as his foot was separated from his body, the twisted, gnarled steel of the spent shell casing ripping through skin and bone.
Jason winced for the unfortunate soul, and yet some small, twisted part of him couldn't help but feel pride in Zhang and his men for littering the forest with such monstrosities.
In fact, it took the incapacitation and pseudo-amputation of no less than twelve German soldiers for the Sergeant to half his platoon's advance, letting the remaining Allied troops go free.
They kept going , though, Jason and his men continuing to race through the trees towards the promise of safety and their comrades.

It didn't come.

Frank Zhang was shocked when the enemy turned up - he heard Sergeant Grace bellowing at his troops to fall back in the face of the huge mass of enemy soldiers converging on the town they had worked so hard to capture and defend, and instantly some part of his brain, the part which was able to rationalise the hell that was war and battle, told him that they had lost. The best outcome was death, the alternative being capture.
Frank had heard the stories. Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen…

No.
Capture wasn't an option.
Then the shooting started.

He and his men were in a good position, dug in and ready to hold their ground, that proud old section of ten Canadians of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles with their North French companions, twenty men altogether, had braced themselves in their position, rifles loaded and ready, bayonets fixed and Bren Gun at the ready to hold their position, deep in the pines of the North French forest, and they had opened fire, bellowing a fierce war cry, guns blazing and rounds clattering against the wooden boards set up at their feet to prevent the earth from giving way beneath them.

Immediately, they stilled the SS advance, their bullets thudding into the grey tunics of their opponents, crimson blood spurting from their bodies and staining the soft earth. There was elation, soaring over the adrenaline-driven panic and tension, easing the fear from their bones and relaxing their muscles, bodies settling into a primal rhythm of killing and death, hands moving seemingly without thought as they withdrew and replaced the bolts of their Enfield No.4 rifles, shoulders not even registering the kick of the recoil.

This period of action seemed to extend for an eternity, time melding into nothingness as their limbs moved sans conscious thought. Their minds were blank, eyes dulling with the mindless task of taking the life of another. The rounds clattering against the wood behind them, throwing up chunks of wood and dirt behind them was nothing to them, ripples on the surface of the ponds of their minds.

And then, after a seemingly mammoth span of time, and yet after no time at all, it ended.
In a mighty fountain of mud and wood and fire and steel, an explosive round from a Tiger Tank struck the rear of the trench behind them, and in a plume of debris Frank lost three of his companions.
Three men with whom he had fought and bled, alongside whom he had trained, learned, since the very day he had signed up.
Alongside them fell five of the brave Frenchmen who had opted to serve their country, been captured in their service, and then instead of fleeing behind newly established Allied lines, chose once more to fight, to risk their lives in the face of the greatest of all foes.

The confusion was compounded, a fresh burst of automatic fire ripping through the unprotected torsos of a further two French resistance fighters.
There was no time, no chance to turn tail and flee, no chance to brutally counter as Captain Jackson may have chosen to do.
In the face of the cold grey of those SS uniforms there was no freedom, no survival, no respite.

There was only death.

And so Frank Zhang kept fighting, of not to win, to give those further down the hill some precious respite, to perhaps give Sergeant Grace on the other side of the road some chance of escaping with his own section.
On he went, taking one shot to the shoulder, another to the arm. A third round pinged off his helmet, and the fourth struck him firmly in the stomach.
Of course, Frank didn't register this at the time, the adrenaline blanking out the pain and the bullets keeping the blood within his body, plugging the wound for which they were responsible.
In fact, Frank Zhang would not find out about these brutal, potentially lethal wounds for days, for in truth it would be days that it would take him to recover, the last of twenty, a rifle in his right hand, his left splayed open, eyes closed and his battledress, ironed and pristine as of that morning, coated in blood and grime.

Thalia Grace had no idea what to do at this point.

In a moment of…
Something
Something indeed.
She had sent Charlie Bairstow, the experienced Yorkshireman and his troops away, to retreat towards the recently captured Caen, not far from where they were now set up, hopefully to their own personal safety. It would not do for the British Army to lose two companies in the same engagement, and so if Thalia's decisions had saved the lives of those men, then she had done a good thing in her books, even if it were her last.

Along with them had gone the wounded, as well as the fifty or so captured prisoners and the majority of the resistance fighters.

Well, the wounded had one small exception
Her idiot of a best friend, and the only other Allied Senior Officer on the field, one Perseus Jackson.
The fool had protested for hours as Bairstow was packing up his gear, pulling every excuse that he had accumulated from year upon year of being her pseudo-younger brother, from threats of telling her deepest, darkest secrets, to returning in order to fight anyway.
The straw that broke the camel's back was his own last resort.
The question of their parents.
And so it was resolved.
Throw injury to hell, throw logic to the dogs - they would fight together, and they would die together.

Another fool who had chosen to ignore logic and stay was one young Annabeth Schafer. The German girl seemed to have lost all semblance of logic and sanity in their brief action, rejecting the chance at life for fighting alongside this doomed company, against the people of her own homeland, with whom she seemed to have lost all faith.

Thalia didn't know whether to be glad to have one of her close friends around, or absolutely distraught - she and Annabeth both knew that it was tough to get the girl from Dresden asylum among the British forces, and it was hardly going to be an easy feat to get a German assimilated in British society, even if one took into account all her deeds over the last few years, all of which played a part in Thalia and the SOE's campaign of subterfuge and sabotage.

It was therefore that Thalia found herself in this most uncoveted of positions, with two of the best friends she had ever made, her long-lost brother dead or at best missing, Percy badly wounded and no more than a hundred men against a full battalion of enemy soldiers who had now been warned of the defenders' presence.
No element of surprise, no greater armour, no greater numbers, not even better trained troops, her company of seamen-turned-infantry going up against one of the most feared elite forces in the world, the Waffen SS itself.
Uncoveted indeed, she mused with a scoff of derision.

The first enemy infantry burst past the treeline into the light of the afternoon sun, the bright rays of sunlight glinting off the metal on their kar98k rifles as they advanced, their boots clacking against the cobblestones of the main road, once so quaint and pristine, and yet now rough, the cobblestones worn by the rough tracks of the tanks and stained with blood from the bloody combat of the past days. Stone and masonry littered the streets, blown off by the explosives utilised by each side, and glass was strewn throughout the insides of the houses, crunching under the boots of the allied troops taking cover within their confines.
The church was little more than a shell, the windows removed altogether, and any items of value removed for safety by the retreating British troops, and yet it was still the building in the best condition, with little to no damage sustained to its immaculate stone construction and soaring spire.
Still a lone Bren Gunner was set up atop the spire, muzzle peeking out from the the light brown of the steeple and a brief flash of green visible to a particularly keen eye.
This gunner was the first to open fire this time, .303 calibre rounds striking down men at an astonishing rate.
Those rounds which missed ricocheted off the uneven road, flinging up and embedding themselves in the legs of the enemy, yet more reason for the Allied defenders, nearly exclusively British now, to cheer.

Oh, the fleeting joy of success.
In war there was no room for that.
In war there was no time for that
The British paid the price.

The surge of positive morale was brought crashing down as the lead tank swiveled its gun around to bear, the barrel being raised ever so slightly.
The church tower was removed from its place of three centuries in a moment, its inhabitants dying nearly instantly in a fiery inferno induced by the high explosive shell.
It was so easy it almost appeared dismissive.

The Germans pushed on, flushing out the British defenders, capturing entire section in the blink of an eye, men who had won so many battles aboard the Argo, having been in service of Crown and Country for the better parts of their adult lives.
Some were less lucky, the houses in which they had been sheltering simply torn apart by the main armaments of the tanks.
Thalia knew that death was a near certainty, her position in the rubble of the church now exposed to all that might seek it out, and surrounded by hostiles.
There was no logical alternative to the American-born girl, her time in France having proved exactly why capture was a worse option than death could ever be.

And hence, all of a sudden, this complex situation had a solution.
Survive.
And so Thalia began to think.
And together, with Percy and Annabeth, she fought, like a chained dog in a corner.
A dog was hardly the most threatening of animals at first glance, but there was a reason for which they were used to bait bears.
And like a dog, she fought, and she won, the bear left floundering in her wake.

Perseus Jackson was in pain even when he woke up from his agony-induced sleep, and yet he could not help but note that his bedside nurse was an exceptionally attractive human being of the female sex.
He knew that his time was short, given that he had heard something along the lines of 'four more' and Thalia pleading with Bairstow that he leave with who he could, and so it was worth a shot, was it not?
"So…" he began, a smirk finding its way onto his face at the little gasp of horror that escaped the lips of the blonde, "You're our very own German spy, are you not?" he asked, eyes lighting up with mirth as she frowned, apparently very much affronted by his phrasing.
"I shall have you know, Captain, that I am no more a spy than you are," she replied, eyebrows furrowed in a sign of her discontent, grey eyes seeming to flash with thunder.

Percy was reminded instantly of a passage in the Iliad, in which Homer described the 'Grey eyed Athena' preparing for battle, and was instantly very much amused at the comparison.
After all, it was the Achaeans who had attacked Troy with the support of Athena herself, and it was the Achaeans who had come out of the epic war victorious, though Percy was bloody well sure he would throw a fit if it lasted quite as long as then years - the five so far was well long enough, thank you very much, for there was a life to be lived beyond the war.

"So, miss Not a German Spy, I never did catch you real name, or shall I be calling you that hideous title much longer?" he asked, the mirth returning to his tone, though he was truly curious.
"Schafer, Captain. Annabeth Schafer," she replied, chin rising slightly in pride of her name, though for what reason Percy didn't know - his knowledge of the German language put the name's meaning down as Shepherd, unless…
"Never related to Rudolf, the Military scholar?"
"Correct Captain, Rudi Schafer is my grandfather," she replied, corners of her lips curling into a slight smile at the influence and renown of her Grandfather.
Perseus Jackson did not gape often, and yet here he was, jaw dropping slightly in shock.
"Well that will never do now, will it? The daughter of one of the best contemporary German military historians, granddaughter to one better still, taking up arms against her own?"
The lady, Annabeth, paused, clearly nonplussed as to what this seemingly eccentric Englishman would come up with now.
"Righto, Chase it is." Jackson declared, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Chase?" She questioned, still confused.
"Indeed, Miss Annabeth Chase," he replied simply, rising from the hard hospital bed and jogging away as it dawned on her.
"BLOODY ENGLISHMAN!" she shrieked at him as he ran away, laughing like the child he had been twenty years ago, and running into a rather more panicked Thalia.

And then they talked.
And then the shooting started.
And then they lost.

The losses were too large for Percy to comprehend, not yet.
The tanks had bulldozed their way through this hamlet, that little cluster of buildings once so peaceful and bright, and yet now little more than a few piles of rubble.
They had fled, tails between their legs and carrying only what was essential.

Here they were, a group of three; one struck twice and barely able to fire his rifle with his weak side, let alone the strong one, so great was the damage to his body; the next distraught from the utter failure of her own tactics, so wracked with guilt that it would weigh upon her mind to her dying day; the third a fugitive to all, without a name, without a home, shunned now by her own people, and sure to be rejected by those of the country for whom she had now pledged her allegiance.

And then it truly struck Percy for the first time.
These were the men alongside whom he had come ashore, who he had led on the jungles of steel and pathways of water that was HMS Argo, who had chosen not to flee but to stand their ground in the face of such overwhelming odds.
Jennings, who had taught Percy so much, McAndrew, who had grown so much as a man in these trying times, joining as a rating in '43 when first the Argo left port, and yet now they were all dead, or as good as.
His mind came next to Zhang, that Corporal who had been denied a childhood by this war, and now his life too, for he and Grace had no doubt perished in the pines in the hills alongside their men. The SS were not the sort to simply let people go - it was a miracle in and of itself that this trio had managed to escape the corner in which they had been trapped, and it had cost the lives of many, British and German alike.

And now, Perseus Jackson embraced once more the harsh truth of war.
There was no poetic heroism, no epic last stands, no clean victories such as he had seen on the open seas, no glorious charge to break a desperate situation at the last moment.
No, war was messy, it was painful and it would rip away all that was good and pleasant in life.
It was a state of constant loss, of those in power dealing not in money or power, but in the lives of those under their command.
It was a state of hell.

Annabeth Schafer, or 'Chase' now, apparently, had no idea what to do with her life now.
She had spilled the blood of her own. Not even of fellow humans, or perhaps fellow Europeans, but of her fellow Germans.
These men spoke her language, studied at the same schools in which she had studied, walked the same streets as she had walked, prided themselves on the same efficiency, cheered on the same football teams and watched the same plays.
Political agendas and ridiculous views on foreigners aside, these men were just like her, serving what, by some twisted logic, they perhaps thought was right.
Or perhaps even worse, if these men had been coerced into it, strongarmed into the service of a cause for which they bore no enthusiasm nor faith.

She could not meet the eyes of her companions as they trudged across rough, muddy land towards the Orne river, keeping behind the treeline and constantly ducking for cover at the very hint of the sound of a motorcar engine. She was injured, yes, a piece of shrapnel having pierced her stomach, the piece of metal cutting flesh and wedging itself into her lower abdomen, and her companions had been patient. They had allowed her to pause as she wished, and supported her when her feet gave way from exhaustion, Captain Jackson, or Percy as he insisted she call him, carrying her for perhaps three kilometres without so much as a pause for water in the North French Countryside.

Annabeth had protested his decision constantly despite her waning conscience, and then again as she had heard the Englishman's rough breathing.
She knew not how nor why, and yet between them Percy and Thalia had managed to get her to something reminiscent of safety, to the outskirts of Caen and well behind Allied lines.

They had been placed in a field hospital, one of the large hall in the city having been commandeered for this most noble of causes, and they had met a rather surprising sight.
Right there, on the far side of the hall, was a head of closely cropped blonde hair, on the uniform of an American Paratrooper.
Annabeth had passed out just as Thalia burst out in her shout of relief and joy.

Jason Grace was exhausted, having given nearly continuous CPR to Corporal Zhang alongside his few remaining companions. Two had passed out before the British Army scouts had reached the site of the battle, not in the least expecting to find survivors, Captain Charlie Bairstow having forewarned the men in Caen of the peril in which the defenders of the little hamlet had found themselves.

In fact, it had only been a carpet bombing run by USAF bombers which had destroyed the SS Panzer battalion, which had in fact made significant progress towards Caen itself in the time it had taken for Jason to bring Frank back to some weak form of life.
Somehow they had missed the sound of engines in their focus, and it was in fact only the fact that they had posted a guard that had allowed the British scouts to find them in their spot by the side of the road.

The surprises did not end there though, as they had arrived in the hospital back in Caen to a couple of very familiar, very relieved faces.
Charlie Bairstow was the first to welcome Jason back, backing off quickly as Jason had gasped out in pain, his wounds from the battles of that morning being jostled by the massive man's bear hug.
Next had been several of those who had found themselves too injured to fight the main Panzer column, each red-eyed and weary from the pain of their injuries and from the guilt of their own survival due to the deaths of so many.
The French Resistance fighters could not bear to show their faces, tears streaming down the faces of many as Jason recounted his hellish experience, going into vivid detail on the subject of the enemy's ruthlessness in the field, his own eyes darkening with the memories of the battle as he remembered all those how had lost their lives.

Jason, in no uncertain terms, was having a rather bad day.

He had lost his sister without so much as uttering a word in her presence, going as far as rejecting her, the surprise of her continued existence past their separation being too much for his weak mind to comprehend, and now, having quite possibly lost her barring some insane miracle, he would have spurned that chance.
And then she appeared.
He didn't know if it was a hallucination at first, and then she had walked towards him, and his jaw had dropped, and then they were hugging. Jason couldn't help but sigh in contentment. Decades stood between the last time the two siblings had been able to embrace like this, and yet it was as warm and comforting as the greatest thing in the world. It was so right, so obviously good.
A third person joined the hug, as Percy threw himself into the tangle of limbs, as was his right, Jason mused to himself.

They had lost a lot that day, those five, bound through space and time, but they had gained each other, after close to thirty years of separation, or perhaps having just met, they had gained a valuable lesson.
Even in the Darkest of Times, light could be found, the light of friendship, the light of family.
The light of victory was a mere spark in the distance, and yet it was a million miles closer than it had been yesterday, and it would be yet closer tomorrow.

END OF ACT 1

A/N

Cool, phase one complete, and we have five. I promised ten, and the rest are on their way. I'm sure I had more to say than this, but oh well, I'll edit this if I remember.

Good day to you all,
Sol

REVISED 04/04/2023