Maria, Pull the Trigger and Kill (a World War II adventure)

Deserters

Due to the thoughtful and generous visit from the GeStaPo, our timing had been off. Friendly as they were, they provided us with a uniform, a truck and more weapons, but now we had to leave Weilrod far too early and we had to kill a good number of hours. Our disguise was everything else than perfect, actually, one realized it quickly, that Johanna was not a GeStaPo officer, but a woman. Same for me. We had to use the darkness of the night, to improve our disguise.

Driving that Ford BB truck was atrocious. The seat bench in the front was not adjustable and I could not reach the pedals. I had to drive it more or less standing, leaning against the seat bench. The truck did not have a brake booster either, so I had to throw my entire weight onto the brake paddle, if I wanted that heavy beast to slow down. After 45min. of drive, I was finished and I turned into a forest road and stopped. I was tired and Johanna also knew, that she had to force herself to sleep, but Mathilde was antsy. During the whole entire drive, she asked questions. Why did these men come to the house? What did they want from us? Why did we kill them? Will they come again? The girl asked endless questions for her to be able to process the past events and make sense of them. Now, as we had stopped, she wanted to play. I on the other hand, desperately needed sleep. I had gone to bed late, did not sleep well, was woken up ahead of time and had more than 2 hours of drive in front of me, a heist and another 2,5h of flight.

So Johanna left the truck together with Mathilde, to go and play something in the forest, so that I could sleep. After a while, I had the idea to sleep in the back of the truck, where I could stretch out entirely. While dosing on one of the benches, I thought about training Johanna how to drive. We still had plenty of time and the forest road, was not so bad to learn the basics. Then I fell into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, the truck moved. I looked behind and there I saw Johanna and Mathilde standing in the middle of the forest road. Something had turned entirely wrong.

I could not really have done anything on the truck bed. I could have blindly shot into the cabin, but it would not have helped much, if the truck run off the road after I had killed the driver. I needed to wait, until the truck stopped. Whoever was driving the truck, had taken an eastward direction.

Half an hour later, the truck stopped. I heard someone command: "Fahrbefehl!"

After a couple of seconds another command came: "Aussteigen!"

Was this a roadblock?

The driver's door opened and then I heard an MP40 firing. This might have been my MP40. Drowsy as I was, I had left it on the seat bench. Pinche.

Things were happening on the driver's side of the car and therefore, I dared peep out from behind the canvas on the passenger's side. We were standing in front of a bridge. I had guessed right, it was a roadblock of sorts. From reconnaissance I knew, the Nazi's had sent out small commandos to protect bridges from allied attacks. They usually had an MG seat and a few soldiers, usually with 98K. Not very suitable against bombing or fighter aircraft attack. Maybe the Wehrmacht' Generals thought better than nothing at all. In most cases, those commandos were comprised of very inexperienced schoolboys, 16-18 years, and a more than seasoned commander. So, they not only protected the bridge against allied attacks, they also checked vehicles coming through.

Right there, I heard a German MG rattling. Very shortly, just for 2 seconds, something like 5-10 rounds. Ok, this proved, they did have an MG seat somewhere. Everything had turned quiet now. What should I do? I peeped out on the right side again and there was a river further down below. I might be able to jump out, run the few yards, until I reached the steep riverbank and hopefully be sheltered from the MG fire. I just did not know, where the MG seat was and what was within its line of fire and what was outside?