My name is Make Massey. I am a Private in the U.S. Coast Guard. Today I’m getting shipped to a German town with some Navy soldiers. Our orders were to invade the town and then hold it off from enemy reinforcements until the armored division gets there.
Earlier today I met someone who is perhaps the only respectable guy in the whole Navy, William Richardson. He’s a short and stocky guy with a short temper, but he’s brave and real funny. He’s about as new as I am, but he’s a Private First Class.I was just told that we are about to arrive. I can hear the sound of small arms fire, mixed in with the heavy booming of tank cannons. I pull on my pack, and already the weight is digging into my shoulders. I put a fresh magazine into my M16 and load a fresh round. I place my hand on my pistol holster, making sure it’s not loose.
We hit the shore and I can hear my C.O. yelling at us to “Move, move, move!”. I see the men jumping into the water and follow them. I hit hard and water rushes into my nose and mouth. Coughing and spluttering, I rush towards land.
When I look up I notice two things. One, Germany is beautiful. Rolling hills in the distance, surrounded by green trees as we run up. The sky is a clear blue, brighter than the ocean and there is not a cloud in sight. Two, we are severely outnumbered. There were Germans in every window and hidden in every alleyway. Muzzle flashes bursting, so many that they look like lights on a Christmas tree. Fear rushes into me but I dismiss it. This is not the time to be afraid, my comrades need me.
A guy next to me gets shot, I can hear his scream as he plunges into the water. All around him the water starts turning pink. Running forward, I lift up my M16 and start spraying bullets, hoping to stop the enemy fire for a second. I jump behind cover, bullets hitting the area. When I go to reload my weapon, I realize that my hand is shaking. I can barely get the clip into the weapon . I take a deep breath to calm myself. My C.O. runs up and looks at me. “Are you OK?” He asks.
“Yeah.” I tell him, and then pull him towards the cover as a spray hits near him.
“Thanks.” He tells me, then lifts up and fires a few rounds. I spot Richardson a few meters away from me, trying to fix a jam in his gun. I yell out to him and he looks at me, I motion for him to come over. He nods and sprints over, holding on to his helmet.
“Hey Richardson, we need to go around and flank them or else we’ll never gain any ground with this frontal attack.” I say, and see as he nods. My C.O. looks at me with something like respect, but it is gone before I can make sure. We throw a ‘Willy Pete’ or white-phosphorus grenade, the one that when the fuse hits the phosphorus it lets out a huge puff of smoke for cover. We wait a few seconds, then run towards the houses on the west side.
Right when I turn around the corner I see a German soldier peek around the side. He looks surprised for a split second and then starts to lift up his gun. I take advantage of the hesitation and pull out my knife, slicing his throat and finishing him off with a bullet from my pistol. Richardson goes first, and I hear him fire a couple bullets.
When I get around the corner, I can tell this was a mistake. We ran into a whole squad of German soldiers, there must’ve been at least 15 of them. Lifting up our guns, we all sprayed at the Germans. By some higher force, we killed them all. Laughing nervously, we wonder how we survived. We move more cautiously, not wanting to make that mistake again.
My C.O. (who’s name I now know is Jameson) finds a busted window and climbs through it, motioning for us to follow. “There’s more cover in a building.” He whispers to us, and starts going room to room. We don’t find any German soldiers, so we take a break for a minute to put fresh clips in our guns and Jameson smokes a cigarette.
Jameson tells us our break is over. He tells Richardson to open the front door so we can go further and get to the back of the main German section. Richardson opens the door and looks around, everything seems clear. He takes one step out the door and a distinctive noise cuts through the normal sound of gunfire. A dog covered in blood and mangy fur runs towards Richardson.
He hesitates, barely lifting up his rifle in time. He only gets off a shot or two before the dog is on top of him and rips out his throat. I hear my C.O. let out a whisper of surprise “Oh...my God. Not again!” I glance at him, Again?. The dog turns towards us and growls. My C.O. turns and runs away. I barely have time to register this before the dog lunges at me and bites my leg, jerking it out from under me.
While falling, I pull out my special-issued, limited-edition, custom, ivory plated, M1911 pistol but don’t have time to get a shot off before I feel the dog’s jaws rip my life from me. With my last dying seconds, I hear a small demented voice in the back of my head echo, “Bring his soul back to me.”
