War Stories

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The Night  written by CanadianHawk


 

There we were, pinned down by Soviet machine gun fire. We, the Allies' finest, trapped behind an embankment outside of a Commie base. Our squad had been in charge of taking out the perimeter guns, right up until the perimeter guns started firing. They said this would be a walk in the park, a piece of cake. My buddy, Henry, stood up to lob a grenade. He was cut in two by sentry gunfire. So there we were, caught between a dirt wall with the enemy barring down on us, or an open field behind, which had absolutely no cover for our sorry butts. Five of us left, and all we could do is wait. 

Our radioman tried frantically to call for an air strike on the sentry guns, but for all we knew, no one was listening to our plight. Around midnight, the sentry guns ceased their fire, allowing my men and I a short sigh of relief. No sooner than the guns stopped, conscripts came out of the base, which our Allied brethren would attack on the morrow. Us five heaved our guns onto the side of the embankment to better control our firing. The conscripts were almost near us; I mentally counted about 15. Our lieutenant gave the order to open fire, we did so, but my gun jammed! Most of the enemy infantry had been cut down; one of our men had been wounded in the arm, as I searched for the problem with my rifle. I finally fixed the difficulty while my comrades were still firing at crawling men. As I lifted my rifle, a conscript leapt on me as if out of the ground. We wrestled, I managed to chuck his rifle away in to the bushes, but he still had a combat knife and it was slowly inching towards my throat. 

A pistol shot rang out, and I could see my foe's eyes roll back into his head behind his breathing mask. I heaved the body off of myself, and looked at my lieutenant who replaced his pistol in to his holster. We lasted another 2 hours there, when I finally heard a rumbling in the air above. Harriers! My squad placed our faces to the ground, and hoped to God that a Nighthawk was close by. Missiles slammed into sentry guns, and again the firing ceased, permanently this time. Another noise made us raise or heads, a whirring sound, one that only came from helicopters. There rested a Nighthawk, ready for boarding, it's crew waving us to hurry up and get inside. We grabbed our fallen friends and scurried to the chopper. While in the air, I looked out, back at where we spent the night, huddled and scared. Smoke rose from demolished sentry guns and bodies littered the earth where we stood our ground. I never wanted to go through that again.

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