All It Takes

P.O.W.

  This is the last chapter, but probably the longest.  I hope you enjoy it, and don't forget to comment and vote!
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For a moment, the soldier looked up at the sky and then turned his gaze back on Mitch as if figuring out how Mitch had ended up in this predicament.  "bist du verrückt?"  Those brown eyes accused him of something, but he didn't know what, and it bothered him more than he wanted.

"Look, I don't know what you are saying, but if you are going to kill me, do it now."  He pointed to the gun and then at his forehead, frustrated already with all the foreplay.  The German though only raised an eyebrow, not understanding a word.

"Just," Mitch pointed at the gun again.  "Kill me now."  He made a motion with his hand, indicating a gun, and then it going off, at his forehead. 

The soldier shook his head, and gave his gun to his comrade.  "Nein.  Wir werden dich nicht töten."  He came closer to Mitch, and offered his hand, waving it at Mitch when it wasn't taken immediately.

"I'm not going with you."

"Komm schon," the German said.  His hand waved in front of Mitch, his eyes almost pleading for Mitch to give in.  "Komm schon!"  He grabbed onto Mitch, bringing him to a rough stand, Mitch hardly able to keep himself from hurting his ankle further.

"Fine!  I'll come."  He raised his hands yet again, and the German nodded, finally pleased with the outcome.  The hand he offered before latched onto Mitch, forcing him to use the soldier's shoulder for support as they walked towards the truck. 

"Reinkommen."  He motioned towards the back of the truck as they rounded its side, revealing a flatbed where several other men sat.  Mitch froze in mid hop, his eyes trying to find those of the other men in the vehicle, all of whom tried to look anywhere but at him.  He wanted that gun now more than ever, the safety it offered so much more appealing than a German POW camp. 

"Reinkommen!"  The German repeated the command, and he understood the meaning behind it enough to know that his pause was unwanted.  His eyes fell to the soldier's gun, a long enough stare that the soldier ended up pushing him roughly up into the bed of the truck.  The force of the push left Mitch sprawling on the bed as the door closed shut. 

                  

As the truck began to move, so did the other men, their stares now focused on Mitch, all somber. 

"Where are we going?"  Most of the prisoners didn't answer, likely not knowing the answers themselves.  They seemed to have given up long ago, though their paratrooper uniforms told him they were only captured today like him.

"Belgium," an older man answered from beside him.  His voice had a rough tinge to it, his face covered in the same camouflage that covered Mitch's.  "There's a hospital there.  That's where we are going."

Mitch slid closer to the man, curious, and scared all at once.  "Why would they take us there?  How do you know?"

The man looked at the metal of the truck bed, and Mitch finally saw the gash on the side of the man's neck, only slightly covered by his bandages.  "I don't know why, and I speak German, which I'd say is pretty useful right now."

"Why didn't they kill me?"  He muttered it to himself, but the other man shrugged anyway. 

"Answers probably.  Who knows what they want?"  The man closed his eyes and leaned back on the side of the truck. 

"How can you be so resigned to this?"  The same look the German had given him crossed this man's face too, judging Mitch thoroughly.

"How can you be so resigned to killing yourself?"

"They were going to kill me anyway," Mitch said carefully.

"No they weren't."  The man went back to trying to sleep, eyes closed, and face somehow relaxed.

As much as Mitch wanted to keep pestering the man for answers, he relented, copying the man's posture in hopes of reaching some form of comfort.  What was so wrong with dying?  He had been so sure he was going to be killed back in the bush, and yet here he was.  The dirty metal of the truck bed wasn't much of an improvement to death, but he was alive.  He didn't know how long that would last, but it was something. 

He tried to imagine Turner coming back to that field with a medic in tow, but the destruction of hope had left him with little imagination.  He was supposed to kill Germans, but here he was their prisoner, hardly a day into the mission, likely to die, or remain a prisoner for whatever was left of the war. 

All those months seemed wasted now.  Not once had his training been on the event of being a prisoner, not once had he considered the possibility.  It felt like a stupid joke had been played on him, his life thrown into some comedy that was written at his expense.  His head bumped against the side of the truck as it hit a hole, and he felt the tears come, unstoppable and unwanted. 

The military didn't celebrate prisoners, it denied them; it wanted heroes, and he was no longer one.  He was a possible bargaining chip, a soldier who had failed his mission, and his country.  There were no chains keeping him in that truck, but his ankle made escape impossible, and the Germans had likely known that too. 

They wanted him alive enough to take him to a hospital of all places, and the thought chilled him.  He could only guess at what they wanted, and he didn't have a clue.  He knew nothing beyond the mission that was already in play, and he wasn't an officer, or a pilot. 

Scenarios played in his mind, the kind where he was healed and then shot by a firing squad.  It did little to ease his mind, but then the soldier's face from before entered his thoughts.  While there had been annoyance when Mitch had been less than compliant, the soldier had been kind, something he hadn't expected then, and still found surprising now.  Germans weren't supposed to be nice, they were supposed to be these mass killers, men without a conscious or soul, and yet the man had seemed genuine.

A groan escaped Mitch at that moment as he followed the other man's lead, and gave into rest, resigning himself to what fate had in store for him.  His chance to be a hero was gone, but he could still live.  It sounded like giving up, but somehow the thought grew on him.  The war had taken his heroism, but not his life, which he had hoped to keep anyway.  It was a trade he was willing to make.