A story I've been (slowly) working on since the middle of February. It is entirely based on one dream I had, and for this reason it will have its share of inconsistencies with actual history. All the same, I'm liking how it's turning out and feel alright with the the idea of sharing it here.
I'll take any criticism, positive or negative, about the story or my writing. Anything that I can use to improve the presentation of this is nice.
This post will have the first five parts. I apologize for the massive wall of text, and hope that keeping them in their parts makes it easier to find the time to read through.
Enjoy~
Part 1
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They say a war story is one that can be used to show bravery or courage in the face of death. What comes with that war story, though, is a survivor - the man who tells the story. I am that man, and I present to you my story of fighting for the allies while I still care to retell it. I was a nobody at the time, just your average soldier that nobody could tell from any other soldier, and to preserve this, I will tell it in that sense - I am nameless.
I was born in a small city. We didn't have much here - wasn't exactly an economic powerhouse. What we did have, though, was factories. No matter where I went, I could always smell the effects if heading toward industrialization. These smells were, obviously, prevalent through much of the world, but ours was gunpowder and metals. We produced munitions. It was this fact that shaped a lot of my life, and those around me.
I always wondered why all we did was produce guns and bullets. To me, it seemed like nothing was really changing for the better. Now, though, it seems obvious; but, I'll get to that later. We had only one school - it taught all levels of education with several different grade levels being taught by any given teacher at the same time. It was small enough that everybody knew everybody else. Yet, impersonal enough that anybody could have been anybody else.
It didn't really matter how well you did in your studies - very few of us ever left to pursue further education. The man who owned most of the factories here paid us pretty well. He and he alone, put food on the tables of most families here. He would occasionally be seen out and about striking up conversations with whoever he passed by in the streets. His accent, being one I couldn't recognize at the time, was never a bother for anybody - he was just such an influence over everyone's lives that nobody even viewed him as a foreigner.
If his factories weren’t around, though, I might not have been stuck growing old and thinking of my home as a bleak place. I might not have been stuck, for many years following, been served with a permanent reminder of home - in the smell. Gun powder. Soon, little did I know, this smell would be well known to the entire world - and the whole world would associate it with war. I, and everybody I knew, would be stuck associating it with home.
In a way, though, this may have been our blessing. No matter where we were, everything eventually smelled like home. It never felt like a foreign land, and as such, we could always be fighting, in a way, for our homes and our soil, whether we were there or not. This may just be why I'm still alive telling this story.
I had been working in one of the factories for about four years. I had bled, cried, breathed fumes so thick it hurt to breathe, and yet I remained. My family needed it. I needed it. One day, though, we were all awoken mid night by the drums of war. The entire town shot out of bed, grabbed their arms, and ran to the city center - our pre-determined meet up location. One man never came.
Our eyes heavy, and our bodies cold, we were told that our town would soon be invaded by a German militia. We already had the smell, and soon we would have the sound to go with it. Only fitting, I suppose.
Apparently, we had an informant stationed in Germany who had been found out. He fled, but the Germans knew who he was and where he was from. Upon his arrival, he told our Mayor that the Germans would surely follow him.
We felt safe, because of all the arms we had in our factories. We would have been able to hold off the Germans for quite some time. We split up into teams to gather as much stuff from each factory as we could, and agreed to meet at the one closest to where we figured the Germans would come from.
When my team arrived at our designated factory, the farthest from where ground zero was thought to be, we found the factory empty. That is, all of the assembled ammunition, all of the parts needed to make more, all of the guns, and all of the other equipment. All that remained was the large and immovable manufacturing equipment.
Our team was, thus, stuck with only what we had in our rooms when the alarm sounded: shotguns and handguns. We decided to help out the next team, and headed to their designated factory. They, though, were not there. And neither was any of the equipment. Knowing it was impossible that they had emptied it themselves, we were starting to get a little worried about our plan.
Each factory we visited, the story was the same. Everything was gone. The few teams we ran into had found the same thing we had found at ours, and were deciding what to do next. As a group, we opted to just head to ground zero. There, all the teams that we didn't find were waiting. Everybody confirmed the same thing - all of the equipment had been removed. Even in this one.
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Part 2
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There are only so many moments in your life that you can reflect on and point out, plainly, that this particular one or that particular one had the most impressive effect on your life, whether for the better or worse. Being that we were a relatively close-knit community, what was about to happen here would send shockwaves rippling through our lives until we can't recall it at all anymore.
Some of us turned face and ran west. Others pre-empted the inevitable and turns their barrels to their skulls. To me, all of these people felt like traitors. Spineless people who, until now, all of us had relied on to keep our friends and family as well endowed as could be done for the time. Now, though, I'm left holding them all in contempt that they would spit on the years of friend and kinship that we have shared - doing so by turning their back on the one time our homes and our land may need us to come to its rescue.
This specific act on the part of a large chunk of our people was the first time that I could see, tangibly, the ugliness of human behaviour. It left a bitter taste for me to remember my home by, as I would never again return here. It shaped who I was to become, and how I would react to a certain event much further down the line. Before my war even started, I already wanted it to be over. It brought out the worst in the people I thought would always be there.
Those of us that remained set out to barricade the building as much as could be done. We spent the rest of the night moving food and water to the roof of the building, blocking the doors with any machinery we could manage to move, and then setting up our camp up top. This would become our one and only stand for everything our lives have stood for, and we were determined to make it work.
Our informant warned us of the amount of soldiers the Germans could strike us with. He warned us of the military technology they would have, of which were things we had never seen here. We produced guns, bullets, cannons, and many other smaller weapons. They were reported to have large armoured forts with belts to move them, tanks, and winged ones in the sky. Our defense consisted of a building they could plow over in minutes, and arms that wouldn't even scratch their tanks. We were all doomed to be buried by the destruction that comes with the smell so familiar to us.
We sat on our roof apprehensively awaiting the arrival of who would soon become our enemy. Looking into the eyes of any man or woman who held a weapon was enough to know not one of us belonged here - in one, you would see fear of what is to come. In other, you'd see doubt that any of us would walk out of this alive. Some, you could see hope for the dreams they had for their futures. You could see on those faces, though, the despair that comes with having those dreams torn from you.
Tears. For those who already died. For the hurt felt from those who turned their backs. For the children who would never grow old. For the homes we may never enter again, and the memories that reside within them. They are a universal sign of everything we stood for - a true reminder that we are, in fact, in this together and for all the right reasons.
The sun eventually arose one last time. This was the one time in my life, to this time, that I would ever appreciate the sight of a reflection off of a person's tears. Although, it wasn't the only reflection we would see on this day. Looking far out toward the horizon, we could now clearly see the approaching military. Not a single thing we could see resembled a human - it was a wall of metal lined up side by side and layers deep that ushered in our final day at home.
We sat, poised, waiting for it all to come into range of everything we had. It wasn't long, though, before the winged variety came up over the horizon and approached much faster than anything we could see on the ground. Bombers, we were told, would come in and rain death on our land before anything on land would arrive. For this, we had nothing to defend ourselves with.
We all stared toward the sky at the sheet of black that resembled a large flock of crows - not a word being spoken, our hands trembling. I had a handgun in my belt and a shotgun in my arms - some sported cannons, which had been left behind, with small amounts of ammunition some of us had in our homes. Others had a shotgun. Behind us laid a large pile of other guns and munitions, but obviously not enough to defend against what slowly approached us.
Time passed in what seemed like hours to each second. The bombers nearly here, and us with our guns aimed toward the sky, our lives would in mere seconds change as we knew them.
As soon as we thought we would be able to strike the bombers, we began firing. I've never heard something so loud as dozens of shotguns, rifles, and handguns firing in unison. Nothing I ever heard in the factories even compared. And, yet, the Germans didn't drop a single shell on our heads, despite the one or two we managed to render incapable of flight - they quickly and loudly fell from the sky and crashed on our homes behind us.
The numerous many that we couldn't bring down flew straight over our heads. They began dropping their bombs on every other building that was behind us, quickly and effectively destroying many buildings and, in their eyes, killing anybody who was not a sitting duck with everybody that had been firing at them. We watched with disbelief as everything that any of us had ever known instantly came to look nothing like what we could remember. Nothing in my life, ever, had ever been so difficult to see as memories being crushed by the impossibly heavy weight of war.
After the rain of bombs finished, there was nothing to be seen anymore except rising clouds of blackened smoke and dust. Our entire lives reduced to rubble, and anything smaller rose into the air to be carried away wherever the winds felt like taking it. The bombers turned around and flew off back toward the horizon from whence they came. Our building, where we make our stand, was the only one that remained standing and undamaged.
We turned our attention toward the mass of tanks that much more slowly approached us. Many of us had exhausted our supply of ammunition, and I was left with only my handgun with six bullets in it. By now, the tanks were nearly here. At any moment, they could begin firing onto us a volley of metal that matched our production in a day every few seconds.
But they didn't. I fired four shots at the tanks, and everyone else unloaded everything that remained. If it wasn't insult enough already, the cannons we had didn't even function - it's no wonder whoever emptied everything out left these and only these behind. The tanks never retaliated. They parted when they reached our building, passing us by entirely.
They began firing on everything that the bombers hadn't already destroyed. They trampled on and over anything small enough to not move for, and destroyed everything else. After all the noise was finished, one last cloud of blackened smoke rose into the sky, carrying with it the last of our history. I realized at this moment that they never intended to kill us.
What they wanted was to crush us. To destroy anything and everything that we and all of the other people in our country stood for. This was the cold, unforgiving hand of a bitter nation - all because they discovered one spy in their ranks. They were doing one thing and one thing only - sending a message of domination without knowingly ending a single life. The only options that remained for us were to run and hide, or submit to the Germans.
I would do neither. This was my first day of war, and I had already seen enough of how disgusting our race is. I would spend the rest of my time on this Earth fighting for my land, my people, my history, my dreams, and anybody these Germans would seek to harm. I vowed that I would do it the exact same way they have done it to me - without firing a single round at a living being. They will experience my emotional pain, not physical pain. One passes with time. The other does not.
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Part 3
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I traveled for a while. Though, looking back on it, "wandered" is probably a more appropriate word. The only thing from home that I had left, other than the clothing I had on my back, was this one handgun. Despite my unwillingness to use it, I still kept it. It would forever serve as a reminder of why it is I'm still walking. Nice as it was to have that, though, there's never anything quite as useful as something to tell you what to do next.
Being that we as a nation were, apparently, now committed to war, I had to think long and hard about how to cast an equal reaction back on them for what they've done to me and my friends. For that reason, I wandered. Carefully, of course. The object, for occupied cities, was to stay unnoticed. Otherwise, it was to simply stay quiet and blend in. Key to observation is to not make your presence known, as even that alone can change the outcome short and long term of any event regardless of significance.
Some cities weren't as fortunate as we were. That is to say, we lost minimal lives and were not occupied. I could see the same things I saw in the faces of the people back at home on the faces of people everywhere I looked now. Some were too shocked, and produced it in a nullified form. Others showed it vastly amplified. Some were used as slaves, others murdered on a whim. Some were used as entertainment only to be discarded - the equivalent of a dollar store toy, easy come, and easy go.
Some hadn't yet been attacked, and carried on their lives as normal. Envy would sometimes float around in my head when I saw these places. They did what any normal people did - woke up, got dressed, worked, ate, conversed. Idle conversation became something I quite missed, though the subjects often insulting. Complaints of work conditions were a popular subject. As were rumours of events in occupied cities. That one I particularly disliked - people were divided. Some were genuinely hurt that their people, whether known to them or not, had suffered as they had. Others theorized that it never happened at all.
I couldn't possibly convey how angry that one made me. I often thought of becoming the messenger for these people and telling them of my story, but mine being as unreal and unprecedented as it was enough to convince me to keep my mouth shut and continue with what I was doing - now was not the time to make myself known. I couldn't do much more than speculate what everybody else had opted to do. I ran off on my own to pursue my eventual revenge, and they had split into a few different groups and went in equally different directions. Dead or alive, they were worth the same to me now.
That realization was a powerful one. It made me, without a doubt, conclude I was now no better than the people who turned face while our walls still stood - the only difference is that I had backed off after the fact when my presence may have been even more needed than before. Even more fodder for my fire - it's often said a man with nothing has nothing to lose. For this, I thought I had become stronger. A nameless man with a burning desire for revenge and nothing to hold me back - I would eventually become something that was feared, little did I know.
My travels lasted months. Long enough for me to see more faces than I'd ever seen in my life prior. The amount of information you can get from a person without even being seen by them can be quite substantial, I learned. A very valuable lesson it was. I learned how to clearly read signs of anger and contempt, and everything between and across the spectrum to sincere concern for another born of total selflessness. It teaches you very quickly how to tell who can be trusted and who simply can't.
Along with that, I learned very well how to stay unseen. For months, I had associated with nobody and had been noticed by no more. Fear combined with desire is a fearsome combination - it forces you to learn to calm your nerves. Knowing that any miss-step could make a sound that could get you noticed causes you to tread carefully. Knowing any unexpected person could be around a corner or hiding in a tree forces you to breathe quietly and widen your ears. It turns you from a human into a predator waiting for the absolute most opportune time to strike.
I said I was a soldier. Never officially, but in fame and in costume I most certainly was. There came a day where I found a handful of German nobodies and a single high ranking officer "playing" with a small family of three. By this time, I had seen quite enough of people's hurt - caused or received. It was time to take the leap and put my new skills to the test. I pulled out my handgun and snuck my way toward them.
My eyes scanned the ground for anything that would make unnatural and noticeable sounds. I listened to the breeze, to the leaves, and to their stomping boots. I thought to myself that I could really use some new boots. I snuck up while staying out of sight of all the Germans and the people entertaining them, and at one specific moment where the captain took one step too far backward, he fell directly into my hands.
My gun pointed squarely at his skull prepared to make a donut out of his face surely made him realize he had made a mistake. I gripped him firmly to ensure he could not trip me, turn around, nor draw arms. His troop turned, and I immediately told all of my people to flee. The four nameless Germans all drew arms and pointed them toward me and, consequentially, their captain. They tried threatening me, warning me, dealing with me, pleading with me, but they failed to realize I was no longer somebody capable of backing down.
I forced the captain to have his entire troop drop their arms, and then lift their shirts over their heads. As I had hoped, they were too thick to see through. I kicked some rocks around, dragged the captain carefully side to side in varying amounts, and prayed none of those soldiers kept arms and had the same skills I do. Now the gambles began.
I told the captain that I would soon release him, and that he was to move two paces forward, disarm himself, and join his comrades without turning around. He was to do this as quietly as possible, as any dissatisfaction on my part would result in him and, as far as he knew, all of his men dead. I let him go, and he did exactly as I asked as if he were listening to a school teacher and wanted a gold star.
My next order was for him to, one by one, remove all of the military attire from his comrades, ending by turning them to face the other way before taking off the shirts. He was to then do the same to himself. He complied with all of these diligently. Quite admirable, really, but I was sure his boss wouldn't much like to hear about this.
My next order was for them to walk left as if to walk around the circumference of a circle - without ever turning around. I would do the same. The end result, of course, was for us to essentially trade places, leaving their arms and clothing on the ground for me to pick up. I then told them to run into the trees from whence I came, and that anyone who turns around would be shot dead.
Four of them, one of them being the captain, did just that. One of the nameless decided he wanted to be a hero, and turned back around just before reaching the trees in an attempt to take me down. I dug my foot into the dirt and waited patiently for him to reach me. As he did, I kicked plenty of dirt up into his face and hit him a few times in the head with the back of my gun. The other four never turned around.
This one, I had decided, would be the one to start my story on their side. I instructed him to tell the story of what happened here to every German he met who he knew did not have a direct connection to any high ranking officer - and to never give his real name in so doing. The captain who ran off would surely lie about what happened in order to save his own skin, and probably force the 3 soldiers under his command to do the same. This one, though, now owes his life to me and is too far behind to be controlled by his captain during the debriefing. Rumour of me would begin to spread and become grander and grander the more times it gets passed from ear to ear. I gave him one of the suits and sent him on his way - he knew his life as a soldier had come to an end.
I picked up their arms, the remaining four military uniforms, and hopped into the vehicle they had ever so nicely left me in ownership of. From today onward, I would act and speak as a German, and rip their entire existence to pieces from the inside out. Before turning on the car, I slipped into the captain's uniform and drove off into the city. The family of three, who I had told to flee, fled only so far away and remained to watch the rest. I hadn't planned on this, but it would eventually work to my advantage.
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Part 4
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To be truthful, I hadn't planned much further than this when I attacked those Germans. There is now a man driving a German vehicle, wearing a German captain's uniform, and clearly hasn't had a decent shower or a shave in months. Only slightly suspicious. Knowing full well there was no way I could possibly pass for a real German citizen with my skill of the German tongue, I knew I would have to get what I need through ways appropriate of a German: intimidation.
I, to this day, regard this very hour as one of the lowest in my life, and do wish there were another way I could have gone about it. I found a side road with few eyes on it and moved all the guns save one into the trunk, hiding some of the smaller ones under the seats. I kept the Captain's Walther on me, and my own gun tucked away under my shirt. After this, I hopped back into the car and drove to a nearby home - one that appeared to be vacant.
Slowly walking up the door, my collar flipped up, it became clear fairly quickly that the house was not in fact vacant. The curtains in the windows drifted unnaturally at one point, more so than would be caused by a draft. There was at least one person inside. Upon declaring the order for whoever is inside to open the door, the voice that came back was in the same tongue as my native one. I fed him a very obvious lie that my station had been compromised and I arbitrarily chose this house to temporarily set up camp. My fluency in his language was probably enough to give myself away, which is something I had counted on happening so as to invoke some amount of sympathy.
The man opened the door, and stared me in the eye for several seconds too long before I was forced to treat him as being disrespectful to a German official - I pushed him backward and walked directly into his home and closed the door behind me. Without wasting a moment, I had him show me to his pantry in hopes he would have some form of food in a tied bag - counting my stars, he did. I promptly tied him up and had him tell me where his bathroom is. It was painful to be a German in the eyes of someone I should be protecting, but my gamble on his ears was a loss.
Being able to stand in one spot and feel water instead of mud between my toes had never felt so wonderful. Almost as if I had just made my way out of a trek through the desert, this water somehow felt more glorious than all the rain that struck me in my time outdoors. I found his razors and a pair of scissors and proceeded to groom myself into a look appropriate for my wear, and then got re-dressed and found the man still sitting where I left him. His expression was drastically different - with a fear unlike what I'd seen in quite some time, he directed me to go to another room by nodding in its direction.
It instantly became clear to me. He knew that I wasn't German, but had to act as if I were so as not to draw suspicion from the German who had heard me speak so fluently in the language of the people being persecuted here. He was giving me an opportunity to salvage my own life, rather than throwing it away for me by showing a sort of racial companionship with me.
Another man called to me, in my tongue, with a German accent. Couldn't run, won't kill him - my options were few. Pausing for only a couple of seconds, I untied the man and pocketed the rope after wrapping one end of it around my right hand, and then walked toward where the German voice came from without a gun drawn - I had hoped this German hadn't already decided my fate for me.
Slowly going around the corner, I looked first for hands. He had no gun in his hands, and had simply placed it on the counter in front of him. His clothing was that of a lower rank - and he greeted me as such, with a stern salute. I gave him a much less confident one in return and made the assumption he could not tell from my fluency that I'm not German. He asked, simply, what I was doing here, and I replied by saying that it was an arbitrary search of the house. He didn't question any further, and simply motioned to place my gun on the counter the same as him and that we have a drink before parting.
Mutual show of respect, he said, was the reason for it. I didn't question this, and did just that. He, however, immediately began to have questions fly around his head and he shot up, and reached for his gun. Never in my life have I had to move as quickly as I did here - my right hand flew out of my pocket and whipped the other end of the rope around his arm, and my left hand grabbed that end of the rope, and I promptly shifted to behind his back pulling his arm along with me. I pulled it far enough and fast enough to make him drop the gun, and then kicked him in his lower back to force him away before picking my own gun back up off the counter.
He turned around, giggling, and told me that if I wanted to succeed with my disguise that I would have to act according to the rank I've chosen to wear - I should never have heeded his request to disarm myself. A sharp boy, this one, making me think I wasn't in danger only to test me shortly thereafter when my guard is already dropped. "Not everyone wants to be fighting", he insisted, before telling me how impressed he was with how quickly I acted on his attempt to re-arm. I was puzzled, really, why he was giggling through this.
No words came to me. I just stared at this man, with a gun in my hand and a gun at my feet. He explained that my choice to simply disarm him proves that I have no intention of killing him, and that if I were to succeed at what was obviously an internal attack on German military I would need to act accordingly and not obviously refrain from deadly force. He was absolutely correct on this - I wanted to instill fear in the hearts of any German I come across, but I have no idea how to do it. That is their specialty, not mine. He fled the house, leaving me to ponder the truth of his statements.
In order to do to them the same kind of harm they have done to me, I would need to either come up with some emotionally devastating ways to strike at them without harming anybody, or I would need to employ the same mentality that lead me to the point I stand now - a mentality that reflects the suit I wear and the car I drive. To do harm to a devil, you have to become a devil... even though I would not let this happen. I was determined to reconcile my ideals with their cruelty to form a brand of revenge they would never expect.
The man who lives here walked into the room, and gave me the only words he would speak - he told me to strike at their hearts. How, exactly, would I manage such a task without killing people, but still strike fear into every man that walks outside their home walls and hurting my people? This didn't seem very obvious, so I decided the first task should be to get out of this city. I can survive, very well, but I had no idea how to be a military official for a country I'm not even a part of. Right now, though, I knew I had to exercise that survival skill and get out of this city before anyone hears about both of the incidents that I caused today.
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Part 5
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The roads weren't particularly friendly to me. The tires below me were becoming worn out - no destination was in mind, and no idea what step to take next. I did know, though, that in order to be exist under the guise of a German, I would need to be at a level of power that answers to nobody except the highest authorities. As it stood, I would need to state my name and station to any commander, or any Gestapo officers, and any of their superiors. So, for now, I would stick to smaller towns where these people are unlikely to be.
The nights that followed were long. My fear of running into another German like the one from just a few days prior had kept me from finding rest in any building in a town with a German presence. Along the way, I'd pick up blankets from buildings with nobody in them; likely, the people residing in them had been relocated. In them, I couldn't find much. They were a reflection of what laid outside, only with slightly more color. Signs of life could be seen in here. The difference between inside and outside felt as distinct as that between cat and dog, black and white, and only for that reason. Food was scarce. This was an issue I didn't have much of before, but the destruction of the land was becoming more prominent as more time passed.
Fuelling the car became an exceptionally difficult task. I didn't want to leave it behind, and I had no money to purchase fuel. Instead, I found some plastic containers and did a rather unhealthy deed - siphon gas. If I ever found an unattended car, especially at night, I'd stop and try my hand at it. It was fairly messy at first, as I'd often get it wrong and end up with a mouthful of gas. For a while, that always meant I'd gag and let go of whatever tube I was using. Starting over was dreadful each and every time. Eventually, I got good enough at it to have the process complete in a minute or two.
I'd find places to hide the car at night. To be extremely careful about it, I'd find quiet roads with puddles on one side, fairly large ones, that I could drive the car through and not leave visible tracks - it wasn't likely that anyone would look much further than the width of the puddle, and leaving visible tracks going in some random direction would look awfully suspicious. After leaving the road in this way, I'd drive off a ways into wherever it lead me and park in some inconspicuous location and sleep in the car.
These nights gave me a significant amount of time to think. They weren't the warmest in the world, I was always quite nervous of having parked somewhere that would be seen before I wake, and my thoughts on what to do next were all things that would keep me awake long into the night. After many nights of going through this process, I decided I was carrying a lot of dead weight around. Weight I could lose in favour of feeding myself, or establishing myself, or both. That would be my next move.
It didn't take very long, but I eventually found a small town that had a market. At this place, I sold the guns I've been carrying around. All of them except mine and the Walther. Whether the people wanted them to arm themselves or to sell to someone else was of no concern to me - my only concern was to gain some funds. Funds to use for my transportation, for food, for anything I may wind up doing. It was most interesting, however, what looks I would get from people. I did, after all, sell arms donning German attire to non-Germans. Nobody dared question it, though.
This gave me an idea, though. I could probably make a considerable amount of cash selling arms to the Axis' enemies. It wouldn't do much in the way of seeking my revenge, but it would ever so slightly disarm one side and arm the other. This was an acceptable idea in my eyes. The only problem, though, was doing it on a level that would be capable of making a dent in their level of arms while, at the same time, giving me a workable cash flow. The next issue, then, became who I would sell them to. I wouldn't have time or the ability to seek my own revenge if I had to travel from town to town selling small amounts of arms I steal from somewhere or somebody.
I had to be centralized. It had to be near a military compound. Worse yet, it had to be near an Allied camp, as it was unlikely I'd be able to get away with selling arms stolen from Germans back to Germans. I changed back into my original clothing, and drove away from all German influence. Eventually, I found an ally controlled city. I left the car outside its boundary, and went on foot into the city in search of a leading military officer.
The discussions that commenced weren't easy. It was as if they were interrogating me at first - questioning why I was so filthy, where I'd come from, who I am, what I'm doing, how I got here, what I'd come for.. the questions were endless. Before they finished, they had had probably decided I was insane, but not a threat. They let me plead my case - I put an offer on the table. The offer was I would provide them with quantities of German arms in return for cash. The terms I offered, though, were that it had to be anonymous. They were not to know how or where from I would acquire the arms. I was to have no knowledge of what they did with them afterward. And, I would not be required to stay within their walls.
Whether they were humouring me or not, I will never know. Maybe they really did think I was insane, and accepted simply on the grounds that I would never provide. Perhaps they thought the concept was attractive - they could get an extra supply of arms, if small, and it would be coming from German reserves which helps two of their causes, saving allied lives and lowering German numbers. I told them I hadn't much of an idea when my provisions would begin arriving, or in what intervals, but that they could expect me at some point in the future.
With a place to send my spoils secured, my next task was to find a place to centralize myself. Somewhere relatively near to here, and somewhere otherwise unoccupied. After returning to the car, I drove to various nearby towns that weren't directly controlled by either power in search of an unused building of a considerable size.
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I'll take any criticism, positive or negative, about the story or my writing. Anything that I can use to improve the presentation of this is nice.
This post will have the first five parts. I apologize for the massive wall of text, and hope that keeping them in their parts makes it easier to find the time to read through.
Enjoy~
Part 1
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They say a war story is one that can be used to show bravery or courage in the face of death. What comes with that war story, though, is a survivor - the man who tells the story. I am that man, and I present to you my story of fighting for the allies while I still care to retell it. I was a nobody at the time, just your average soldier that nobody could tell from any other soldier, and to preserve this, I will tell it in that sense - I am nameless.
I was born in a small city. We didn't have much here - wasn't exactly an economic powerhouse. What we did have, though, was factories. No matter where I went, I could always smell the effects if heading toward industrialization. These smells were, obviously, prevalent through much of the world, but ours was gunpowder and metals. We produced munitions. It was this fact that shaped a lot of my life, and those around me.
I always wondered why all we did was produce guns and bullets. To me, it seemed like nothing was really changing for the better. Now, though, it seems obvious; but, I'll get to that later. We had only one school - it taught all levels of education with several different grade levels being taught by any given teacher at the same time. It was small enough that everybody knew everybody else. Yet, impersonal enough that anybody could have been anybody else.
It didn't really matter how well you did in your studies - very few of us ever left to pursue further education. The man who owned most of the factories here paid us pretty well. He and he alone, put food on the tables of most families here. He would occasionally be seen out and about striking up conversations with whoever he passed by in the streets. His accent, being one I couldn't recognize at the time, was never a bother for anybody - he was just such an influence over everyone's lives that nobody even viewed him as a foreigner.
If his factories weren’t around, though, I might not have been stuck growing old and thinking of my home as a bleak place. I might not have been stuck, for many years following, been served with a permanent reminder of home - in the smell. Gun powder. Soon, little did I know, this smell would be well known to the entire world - and the whole world would associate it with war. I, and everybody I knew, would be stuck associating it with home.
In a way, though, this may have been our blessing. No matter where we were, everything eventually smelled like home. It never felt like a foreign land, and as such, we could always be fighting, in a way, for our homes and our soil, whether we were there or not. This may just be why I'm still alive telling this story.
I had been working in one of the factories for about four years. I had bled, cried, breathed fumes so thick it hurt to breathe, and yet I remained. My family needed it. I needed it. One day, though, we were all awoken mid night by the drums of war. The entire town shot out of bed, grabbed their arms, and ran to the city center - our pre-determined meet up location. One man never came.
Our eyes heavy, and our bodies cold, we were told that our town would soon be invaded by a German militia. We already had the smell, and soon we would have the sound to go with it. Only fitting, I suppose.
Apparently, we had an informant stationed in Germany who had been found out. He fled, but the Germans knew who he was and where he was from. Upon his arrival, he told our Mayor that the Germans would surely follow him.
We felt safe, because of all the arms we had in our factories. We would have been able to hold off the Germans for quite some time. We split up into teams to gather as much stuff from each factory as we could, and agreed to meet at the one closest to where we figured the Germans would come from.
When my team arrived at our designated factory, the farthest from where ground zero was thought to be, we found the factory empty. That is, all of the assembled ammunition, all of the parts needed to make more, all of the guns, and all of the other equipment. All that remained was the large and immovable manufacturing equipment.
Our team was, thus, stuck with only what we had in our rooms when the alarm sounded: shotguns and handguns. We decided to help out the next team, and headed to their designated factory. They, though, were not there. And neither was any of the equipment. Knowing it was impossible that they had emptied it themselves, we were starting to get a little worried about our plan.
Each factory we visited, the story was the same. Everything was gone. The few teams we ran into had found the same thing we had found at ours, and were deciding what to do next. As a group, we opted to just head to ground zero. There, all the teams that we didn't find were waiting. Everybody confirmed the same thing - all of the equipment had been removed. Even in this one.
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Part 2
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There are only so many moments in your life that you can reflect on and point out, plainly, that this particular one or that particular one had the most impressive effect on your life, whether for the better or worse. Being that we were a relatively close-knit community, what was about to happen here would send shockwaves rippling through our lives until we can't recall it at all anymore.
Some of us turned face and ran west. Others pre-empted the inevitable and turns their barrels to their skulls. To me, all of these people felt like traitors. Spineless people who, until now, all of us had relied on to keep our friends and family as well endowed as could be done for the time. Now, though, I'm left holding them all in contempt that they would spit on the years of friend and kinship that we have shared - doing so by turning their back on the one time our homes and our land may need us to come to its rescue.
This specific act on the part of a large chunk of our people was the first time that I could see, tangibly, the ugliness of human behaviour. It left a bitter taste for me to remember my home by, as I would never again return here. It shaped who I was to become, and how I would react to a certain event much further down the line. Before my war even started, I already wanted it to be over. It brought out the worst in the people I thought would always be there.
Those of us that remained set out to barricade the building as much as could be done. We spent the rest of the night moving food and water to the roof of the building, blocking the doors with any machinery we could manage to move, and then setting up our camp up top. This would become our one and only stand for everything our lives have stood for, and we were determined to make it work.
Our informant warned us of the amount of soldiers the Germans could strike us with. He warned us of the military technology they would have, of which were things we had never seen here. We produced guns, bullets, cannons, and many other smaller weapons. They were reported to have large armoured forts with belts to move them, tanks, and winged ones in the sky. Our defense consisted of a building they could plow over in minutes, and arms that wouldn't even scratch their tanks. We were all doomed to be buried by the destruction that comes with the smell so familiar to us.
We sat on our roof apprehensively awaiting the arrival of who would soon become our enemy. Looking into the eyes of any man or woman who held a weapon was enough to know not one of us belonged here - in one, you would see fear of what is to come. In other, you'd see doubt that any of us would walk out of this alive. Some, you could see hope for the dreams they had for their futures. You could see on those faces, though, the despair that comes with having those dreams torn from you.
Tears. For those who already died. For the hurt felt from those who turned their backs. For the children who would never grow old. For the homes we may never enter again, and the memories that reside within them. They are a universal sign of everything we stood for - a true reminder that we are, in fact, in this together and for all the right reasons.
The sun eventually arose one last time. This was the one time in my life, to this time, that I would ever appreciate the sight of a reflection off of a person's tears. Although, it wasn't the only reflection we would see on this day. Looking far out toward the horizon, we could now clearly see the approaching military. Not a single thing we could see resembled a human - it was a wall of metal lined up side by side and layers deep that ushered in our final day at home.
We sat, poised, waiting for it all to come into range of everything we had. It wasn't long, though, before the winged variety came up over the horizon and approached much faster than anything we could see on the ground. Bombers, we were told, would come in and rain death on our land before anything on land would arrive. For this, we had nothing to defend ourselves with.
We all stared toward the sky at the sheet of black that resembled a large flock of crows - not a word being spoken, our hands trembling. I had a handgun in my belt and a shotgun in my arms - some sported cannons, which had been left behind, with small amounts of ammunition some of us had in our homes. Others had a shotgun. Behind us laid a large pile of other guns and munitions, but obviously not enough to defend against what slowly approached us.
Time passed in what seemed like hours to each second. The bombers nearly here, and us with our guns aimed toward the sky, our lives would in mere seconds change as we knew them.
As soon as we thought we would be able to strike the bombers, we began firing. I've never heard something so loud as dozens of shotguns, rifles, and handguns firing in unison. Nothing I ever heard in the factories even compared. And, yet, the Germans didn't drop a single shell on our heads, despite the one or two we managed to render incapable of flight - they quickly and loudly fell from the sky and crashed on our homes behind us.
The numerous many that we couldn't bring down flew straight over our heads. They began dropping their bombs on every other building that was behind us, quickly and effectively destroying many buildings and, in their eyes, killing anybody who was not a sitting duck with everybody that had been firing at them. We watched with disbelief as everything that any of us had ever known instantly came to look nothing like what we could remember. Nothing in my life, ever, had ever been so difficult to see as memories being crushed by the impossibly heavy weight of war.
After the rain of bombs finished, there was nothing to be seen anymore except rising clouds of blackened smoke and dust. Our entire lives reduced to rubble, and anything smaller rose into the air to be carried away wherever the winds felt like taking it. The bombers turned around and flew off back toward the horizon from whence they came. Our building, where we make our stand, was the only one that remained standing and undamaged.
We turned our attention toward the mass of tanks that much more slowly approached us. Many of us had exhausted our supply of ammunition, and I was left with only my handgun with six bullets in it. By now, the tanks were nearly here. At any moment, they could begin firing onto us a volley of metal that matched our production in a day every few seconds.
But they didn't. I fired four shots at the tanks, and everyone else unloaded everything that remained. If it wasn't insult enough already, the cannons we had didn't even function - it's no wonder whoever emptied everything out left these and only these behind. The tanks never retaliated. They parted when they reached our building, passing us by entirely.
They began firing on everything that the bombers hadn't already destroyed. They trampled on and over anything small enough to not move for, and destroyed everything else. After all the noise was finished, one last cloud of blackened smoke rose into the sky, carrying with it the last of our history. I realized at this moment that they never intended to kill us.
What they wanted was to crush us. To destroy anything and everything that we and all of the other people in our country stood for. This was the cold, unforgiving hand of a bitter nation - all because they discovered one spy in their ranks. They were doing one thing and one thing only - sending a message of domination without knowingly ending a single life. The only options that remained for us were to run and hide, or submit to the Germans.
I would do neither. This was my first day of war, and I had already seen enough of how disgusting our race is. I would spend the rest of my time on this Earth fighting for my land, my people, my history, my dreams, and anybody these Germans would seek to harm. I vowed that I would do it the exact same way they have done it to me - without firing a single round at a living being. They will experience my emotional pain, not physical pain. One passes with time. The other does not.
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Part 3
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I traveled for a while. Though, looking back on it, "wandered" is probably a more appropriate word. The only thing from home that I had left, other than the clothing I had on my back, was this one handgun. Despite my unwillingness to use it, I still kept it. It would forever serve as a reminder of why it is I'm still walking. Nice as it was to have that, though, there's never anything quite as useful as something to tell you what to do next.
Being that we as a nation were, apparently, now committed to war, I had to think long and hard about how to cast an equal reaction back on them for what they've done to me and my friends. For that reason, I wandered. Carefully, of course. The object, for occupied cities, was to stay unnoticed. Otherwise, it was to simply stay quiet and blend in. Key to observation is to not make your presence known, as even that alone can change the outcome short and long term of any event regardless of significance.
Some cities weren't as fortunate as we were. That is to say, we lost minimal lives and were not occupied. I could see the same things I saw in the faces of the people back at home on the faces of people everywhere I looked now. Some were too shocked, and produced it in a nullified form. Others showed it vastly amplified. Some were used as slaves, others murdered on a whim. Some were used as entertainment only to be discarded - the equivalent of a dollar store toy, easy come, and easy go.
Some hadn't yet been attacked, and carried on their lives as normal. Envy would sometimes float around in my head when I saw these places. They did what any normal people did - woke up, got dressed, worked, ate, conversed. Idle conversation became something I quite missed, though the subjects often insulting. Complaints of work conditions were a popular subject. As were rumours of events in occupied cities. That one I particularly disliked - people were divided. Some were genuinely hurt that their people, whether known to them or not, had suffered as they had. Others theorized that it never happened at all.
I couldn't possibly convey how angry that one made me. I often thought of becoming the messenger for these people and telling them of my story, but mine being as unreal and unprecedented as it was enough to convince me to keep my mouth shut and continue with what I was doing - now was not the time to make myself known. I couldn't do much more than speculate what everybody else had opted to do. I ran off on my own to pursue my eventual revenge, and they had split into a few different groups and went in equally different directions. Dead or alive, they were worth the same to me now.
That realization was a powerful one. It made me, without a doubt, conclude I was now no better than the people who turned face while our walls still stood - the only difference is that I had backed off after the fact when my presence may have been even more needed than before. Even more fodder for my fire - it's often said a man with nothing has nothing to lose. For this, I thought I had become stronger. A nameless man with a burning desire for revenge and nothing to hold me back - I would eventually become something that was feared, little did I know.
My travels lasted months. Long enough for me to see more faces than I'd ever seen in my life prior. The amount of information you can get from a person without even being seen by them can be quite substantial, I learned. A very valuable lesson it was. I learned how to clearly read signs of anger and contempt, and everything between and across the spectrum to sincere concern for another born of total selflessness. It teaches you very quickly how to tell who can be trusted and who simply can't.
Along with that, I learned very well how to stay unseen. For months, I had associated with nobody and had been noticed by no more. Fear combined with desire is a fearsome combination - it forces you to learn to calm your nerves. Knowing that any miss-step could make a sound that could get you noticed causes you to tread carefully. Knowing any unexpected person could be around a corner or hiding in a tree forces you to breathe quietly and widen your ears. It turns you from a human into a predator waiting for the absolute most opportune time to strike.
I said I was a soldier. Never officially, but in fame and in costume I most certainly was. There came a day where I found a handful of German nobodies and a single high ranking officer "playing" with a small family of three. By this time, I had seen quite enough of people's hurt - caused or received. It was time to take the leap and put my new skills to the test. I pulled out my handgun and snuck my way toward them.
My eyes scanned the ground for anything that would make unnatural and noticeable sounds. I listened to the breeze, to the leaves, and to their stomping boots. I thought to myself that I could really use some new boots. I snuck up while staying out of sight of all the Germans and the people entertaining them, and at one specific moment where the captain took one step too far backward, he fell directly into my hands.
My gun pointed squarely at his skull prepared to make a donut out of his face surely made him realize he had made a mistake. I gripped him firmly to ensure he could not trip me, turn around, nor draw arms. His troop turned, and I immediately told all of my people to flee. The four nameless Germans all drew arms and pointed them toward me and, consequentially, their captain. They tried threatening me, warning me, dealing with me, pleading with me, but they failed to realize I was no longer somebody capable of backing down.
I forced the captain to have his entire troop drop their arms, and then lift their shirts over their heads. As I had hoped, they were too thick to see through. I kicked some rocks around, dragged the captain carefully side to side in varying amounts, and prayed none of those soldiers kept arms and had the same skills I do. Now the gambles began.
I told the captain that I would soon release him, and that he was to move two paces forward, disarm himself, and join his comrades without turning around. He was to do this as quietly as possible, as any dissatisfaction on my part would result in him and, as far as he knew, all of his men dead. I let him go, and he did exactly as I asked as if he were listening to a school teacher and wanted a gold star.
My next order was for him to, one by one, remove all of the military attire from his comrades, ending by turning them to face the other way before taking off the shirts. He was to then do the same to himself. He complied with all of these diligently. Quite admirable, really, but I was sure his boss wouldn't much like to hear about this.
My next order was for them to walk left as if to walk around the circumference of a circle - without ever turning around. I would do the same. The end result, of course, was for us to essentially trade places, leaving their arms and clothing on the ground for me to pick up. I then told them to run into the trees from whence I came, and that anyone who turns around would be shot dead.
Four of them, one of them being the captain, did just that. One of the nameless decided he wanted to be a hero, and turned back around just before reaching the trees in an attempt to take me down. I dug my foot into the dirt and waited patiently for him to reach me. As he did, I kicked plenty of dirt up into his face and hit him a few times in the head with the back of my gun. The other four never turned around.
This one, I had decided, would be the one to start my story on their side. I instructed him to tell the story of what happened here to every German he met who he knew did not have a direct connection to any high ranking officer - and to never give his real name in so doing. The captain who ran off would surely lie about what happened in order to save his own skin, and probably force the 3 soldiers under his command to do the same. This one, though, now owes his life to me and is too far behind to be controlled by his captain during the debriefing. Rumour of me would begin to spread and become grander and grander the more times it gets passed from ear to ear. I gave him one of the suits and sent him on his way - he knew his life as a soldier had come to an end.
I picked up their arms, the remaining four military uniforms, and hopped into the vehicle they had ever so nicely left me in ownership of. From today onward, I would act and speak as a German, and rip their entire existence to pieces from the inside out. Before turning on the car, I slipped into the captain's uniform and drove off into the city. The family of three, who I had told to flee, fled only so far away and remained to watch the rest. I hadn't planned on this, but it would eventually work to my advantage.
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Part 4
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To be truthful, I hadn't planned much further than this when I attacked those Germans. There is now a man driving a German vehicle, wearing a German captain's uniform, and clearly hasn't had a decent shower or a shave in months. Only slightly suspicious. Knowing full well there was no way I could possibly pass for a real German citizen with my skill of the German tongue, I knew I would have to get what I need through ways appropriate of a German: intimidation.
I, to this day, regard this very hour as one of the lowest in my life, and do wish there were another way I could have gone about it. I found a side road with few eyes on it and moved all the guns save one into the trunk, hiding some of the smaller ones under the seats. I kept the Captain's Walther on me, and my own gun tucked away under my shirt. After this, I hopped back into the car and drove to a nearby home - one that appeared to be vacant.
Slowly walking up the door, my collar flipped up, it became clear fairly quickly that the house was not in fact vacant. The curtains in the windows drifted unnaturally at one point, more so than would be caused by a draft. There was at least one person inside. Upon declaring the order for whoever is inside to open the door, the voice that came back was in the same tongue as my native one. I fed him a very obvious lie that my station had been compromised and I arbitrarily chose this house to temporarily set up camp. My fluency in his language was probably enough to give myself away, which is something I had counted on happening so as to invoke some amount of sympathy.
The man opened the door, and stared me in the eye for several seconds too long before I was forced to treat him as being disrespectful to a German official - I pushed him backward and walked directly into his home and closed the door behind me. Without wasting a moment, I had him show me to his pantry in hopes he would have some form of food in a tied bag - counting my stars, he did. I promptly tied him up and had him tell me where his bathroom is. It was painful to be a German in the eyes of someone I should be protecting, but my gamble on his ears was a loss.
Being able to stand in one spot and feel water instead of mud between my toes had never felt so wonderful. Almost as if I had just made my way out of a trek through the desert, this water somehow felt more glorious than all the rain that struck me in my time outdoors. I found his razors and a pair of scissors and proceeded to groom myself into a look appropriate for my wear, and then got re-dressed and found the man still sitting where I left him. His expression was drastically different - with a fear unlike what I'd seen in quite some time, he directed me to go to another room by nodding in its direction.
It instantly became clear to me. He knew that I wasn't German, but had to act as if I were so as not to draw suspicion from the German who had heard me speak so fluently in the language of the people being persecuted here. He was giving me an opportunity to salvage my own life, rather than throwing it away for me by showing a sort of racial companionship with me.
Another man called to me, in my tongue, with a German accent. Couldn't run, won't kill him - my options were few. Pausing for only a couple of seconds, I untied the man and pocketed the rope after wrapping one end of it around my right hand, and then walked toward where the German voice came from without a gun drawn - I had hoped this German hadn't already decided my fate for me.
Slowly going around the corner, I looked first for hands. He had no gun in his hands, and had simply placed it on the counter in front of him. His clothing was that of a lower rank - and he greeted me as such, with a stern salute. I gave him a much less confident one in return and made the assumption he could not tell from my fluency that I'm not German. He asked, simply, what I was doing here, and I replied by saying that it was an arbitrary search of the house. He didn't question any further, and simply motioned to place my gun on the counter the same as him and that we have a drink before parting.
Mutual show of respect, he said, was the reason for it. I didn't question this, and did just that. He, however, immediately began to have questions fly around his head and he shot up, and reached for his gun. Never in my life have I had to move as quickly as I did here - my right hand flew out of my pocket and whipped the other end of the rope around his arm, and my left hand grabbed that end of the rope, and I promptly shifted to behind his back pulling his arm along with me. I pulled it far enough and fast enough to make him drop the gun, and then kicked him in his lower back to force him away before picking my own gun back up off the counter.
He turned around, giggling, and told me that if I wanted to succeed with my disguise that I would have to act according to the rank I've chosen to wear - I should never have heeded his request to disarm myself. A sharp boy, this one, making me think I wasn't in danger only to test me shortly thereafter when my guard is already dropped. "Not everyone wants to be fighting", he insisted, before telling me how impressed he was with how quickly I acted on his attempt to re-arm. I was puzzled, really, why he was giggling through this.
No words came to me. I just stared at this man, with a gun in my hand and a gun at my feet. He explained that my choice to simply disarm him proves that I have no intention of killing him, and that if I were to succeed at what was obviously an internal attack on German military I would need to act accordingly and not obviously refrain from deadly force. He was absolutely correct on this - I wanted to instill fear in the hearts of any German I come across, but I have no idea how to do it. That is their specialty, not mine. He fled the house, leaving me to ponder the truth of his statements.
In order to do to them the same kind of harm they have done to me, I would need to either come up with some emotionally devastating ways to strike at them without harming anybody, or I would need to employ the same mentality that lead me to the point I stand now - a mentality that reflects the suit I wear and the car I drive. To do harm to a devil, you have to become a devil... even though I would not let this happen. I was determined to reconcile my ideals with their cruelty to form a brand of revenge they would never expect.
The man who lives here walked into the room, and gave me the only words he would speak - he told me to strike at their hearts. How, exactly, would I manage such a task without killing people, but still strike fear into every man that walks outside their home walls and hurting my people? This didn't seem very obvious, so I decided the first task should be to get out of this city. I can survive, very well, but I had no idea how to be a military official for a country I'm not even a part of. Right now, though, I knew I had to exercise that survival skill and get out of this city before anyone hears about both of the incidents that I caused today.
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Part 5
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The roads weren't particularly friendly to me. The tires below me were becoming worn out - no destination was in mind, and no idea what step to take next. I did know, though, that in order to be exist under the guise of a German, I would need to be at a level of power that answers to nobody except the highest authorities. As it stood, I would need to state my name and station to any commander, or any Gestapo officers, and any of their superiors. So, for now, I would stick to smaller towns where these people are unlikely to be.
The nights that followed were long. My fear of running into another German like the one from just a few days prior had kept me from finding rest in any building in a town with a German presence. Along the way, I'd pick up blankets from buildings with nobody in them; likely, the people residing in them had been relocated. In them, I couldn't find much. They were a reflection of what laid outside, only with slightly more color. Signs of life could be seen in here. The difference between inside and outside felt as distinct as that between cat and dog, black and white, and only for that reason. Food was scarce. This was an issue I didn't have much of before, but the destruction of the land was becoming more prominent as more time passed.
Fuelling the car became an exceptionally difficult task. I didn't want to leave it behind, and I had no money to purchase fuel. Instead, I found some plastic containers and did a rather unhealthy deed - siphon gas. If I ever found an unattended car, especially at night, I'd stop and try my hand at it. It was fairly messy at first, as I'd often get it wrong and end up with a mouthful of gas. For a while, that always meant I'd gag and let go of whatever tube I was using. Starting over was dreadful each and every time. Eventually, I got good enough at it to have the process complete in a minute or two.
I'd find places to hide the car at night. To be extremely careful about it, I'd find quiet roads with puddles on one side, fairly large ones, that I could drive the car through and not leave visible tracks - it wasn't likely that anyone would look much further than the width of the puddle, and leaving visible tracks going in some random direction would look awfully suspicious. After leaving the road in this way, I'd drive off a ways into wherever it lead me and park in some inconspicuous location and sleep in the car.
These nights gave me a significant amount of time to think. They weren't the warmest in the world, I was always quite nervous of having parked somewhere that would be seen before I wake, and my thoughts on what to do next were all things that would keep me awake long into the night. After many nights of going through this process, I decided I was carrying a lot of dead weight around. Weight I could lose in favour of feeding myself, or establishing myself, or both. That would be my next move.
It didn't take very long, but I eventually found a small town that had a market. At this place, I sold the guns I've been carrying around. All of them except mine and the Walther. Whether the people wanted them to arm themselves or to sell to someone else was of no concern to me - my only concern was to gain some funds. Funds to use for my transportation, for food, for anything I may wind up doing. It was most interesting, however, what looks I would get from people. I did, after all, sell arms donning German attire to non-Germans. Nobody dared question it, though.
This gave me an idea, though. I could probably make a considerable amount of cash selling arms to the Axis' enemies. It wouldn't do much in the way of seeking my revenge, but it would ever so slightly disarm one side and arm the other. This was an acceptable idea in my eyes. The only problem, though, was doing it on a level that would be capable of making a dent in their level of arms while, at the same time, giving me a workable cash flow. The next issue, then, became who I would sell them to. I wouldn't have time or the ability to seek my own revenge if I had to travel from town to town selling small amounts of arms I steal from somewhere or somebody.
I had to be centralized. It had to be near a military compound. Worse yet, it had to be near an Allied camp, as it was unlikely I'd be able to get away with selling arms stolen from Germans back to Germans. I changed back into my original clothing, and drove away from all German influence. Eventually, I found an ally controlled city. I left the car outside its boundary, and went on foot into the city in search of a leading military officer.
The discussions that commenced weren't easy. It was as if they were interrogating me at first - questioning why I was so filthy, where I'd come from, who I am, what I'm doing, how I got here, what I'd come for.. the questions were endless. Before they finished, they had had probably decided I was insane, but not a threat. They let me plead my case - I put an offer on the table. The offer was I would provide them with quantities of German arms in return for cash. The terms I offered, though, were that it had to be anonymous. They were not to know how or where from I would acquire the arms. I was to have no knowledge of what they did with them afterward. And, I would not be required to stay within their walls.
Whether they were humouring me or not, I will never know. Maybe they really did think I was insane, and accepted simply on the grounds that I would never provide. Perhaps they thought the concept was attractive - they could get an extra supply of arms, if small, and it would be coming from German reserves which helps two of their causes, saving allied lives and lowering German numbers. I told them I hadn't much of an idea when my provisions would begin arriving, or in what intervals, but that they could expect me at some point in the future.
With a place to send my spoils secured, my next task was to find a place to centralize myself. Somewhere relatively near to here, and somewhere otherwise unoccupied. After returning to the car, I drove to various nearby towns that weren't directly controlled by either power in search of an unused building of a considerable size.
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