The Queen's Shadow

The Unseen Casualties

Their bodies were naked or had little to no clothes on them. I knew the krauts were brutal, but this was something entirely new. Cold air kept the bodies fresh. You could see some of their arms and legs frostbitten. It was a new nightmare, but it also gave me a question what the fuck was in that city? Was it deserted? Or was there an enemy platoon of children waiting for us? I looked at the bodies I wanted to give them a proper burial, but I knew someone was watching us, I could feel it. To make it worse was that this wasn't a warning to us no.

It is for people who did not want to fight in the war. They knew the war was over, and yet they still kept on pushing. All they have to do is let go of this pointless war. I looked around only to find some of my teammates puking or ignoring it; we were all veterans, yet this was something new. I knew this was a warning because of German writing. I wanted to know what it said now.

John was looking down; he could barely form words, but I needed him to look past the nightmare. I needed to know what the hell these signs said. I can understand some German writing, but this was something different I could tell. "Private John, what does it say?" He looked at me. His eyes were trying to come off as stone-cold, but he had a deep sadness in him from this. He hesitated, but then he asked, 'Do you want to know, sir?' I said nothing, as he then began to read words. His voice was mournful and Sympathetic. 'I am a traitor and will not fight for my country. (Ich bin ein Verräter und werde nicht für mein Land kämpfen.) It's painted in black ink. I look back at a lot of our comrades; they're trying to get themselves together. We had seen bodies before we had seen people die before; we had even seen some civilians get shot. It was something new though the magnitude of death against children nonetheless made me question their tactics. What the fuck was wrong with these people?

We were walking to investigate an area, to see not sure of the name. It was a nightmare; there will be buildings all around us, even if they were all mostly ruined; it was almost as if it was an ambush waiting to happen. Then it happened, a bang and then a bullet it had a soldier near me. We were in the middle of the road we were in a kill zone, and they all kept on firing we came with six people, and we were already down to five. So much death in this part of the city, the real problem was that there were no people here outside of soldiers fighting us. We couldn't see them; we were going to die if we did not get out of here. We went into a nearby building, from the looks of it was an old butcher shop. We could hear the bullets hitting the glass and tearing through everything, and all we could do was stay low.

They could have won this, All they had to do was drop a few cooked grenades down into the middle of us, and we would not have had enough time to react. It was only four of us left, and I was hell-bent on trying to keep the rest of my team alive even if I wasn't leading them. I did not want to watch more people die. I can't believe they shot Major Richard I wish I got to know him. We were on the ground, down on our stomachs. Carter tapped me and pointed to the back; there was a doorway. It was an exit—the only other doorway. We began crawling back there and noticed a metal door we opened it, and it was a freezer. It could be an excellent opportunity to get to drop on them or be slaughtered like dogs. Either way, they could have us surrounded. We began crawling into the freezer. It stunk like a grave because it didn't have any ice in it, and the meat left inside started rotting. The shooting finally stopped, but they saw us run into this building. Especially since we were in the middle of the road, Now all we had to do was wait. Calling for help was not an option; we had no radio. Heard voices outside, but they sounded young. I checked my MP40; it was fully loaded. The voices were getting closer. I could not understand the German Language; they were talking too fast; it sounded like they were scared.

I looked at John, and he began to say, 'they don't sound like they are adults.' The realization came to me all too late. These were children fighting us. It was dark in the room, and we couldn't stay here, 'I think we should talk to them.' It was one of the soldiers that were with us; it was Private First Class Zosley. He was a young white American he had black hair buzzcut style small gray eyes and a thin nose he had a round baby face and lacked any facial hair. He was still young, but I respected his resolve to help others. "We can't do that; they are the enemy." He didn't like the idea of shooting kids, and neither did I. He looked down, and then he put his gun down. We tried to stop him but he was already out of the freezer, Our eyes were wide as he said something in German and I heard the guns drop. I looked outside the fridge, and I saw them on the ground crying; what did he say?