A Reason to Fight | Schofield

1 | Captive

March 26th, 1917, ~21:30

I awoke that night in a grass clearing off the side of a dirt road. My eyes flew open and my body bolted upright, as if I was awoken by a blaring alarm, yet there was nothing to hear but the gentle chirping of crickets and the grass rustling in the wind. I quickly became aware of the incredible soreness that spread across my body and the pounding headache that was beating into my skull. As I pushed myself to my feet, my heart sank into despair as I stood alone in the darkness, feeling utterly hopeless. 

My feet spun around in a circle as I looked for anything that could give me a sense of direction. It was too dark—I could barely even make out the shape of my hand when holding it at arm's length from my face. Clouds covered the sky, refusing to allow even a sliver of moonlight through to light the way. My feet wandered a few steps until the crunch under my boots told me I'd found the road.

Despair turned to fear, and it gradually filled me to the brim. With that fear came a recollection of the day's earlier events, of what took place in order to get me here. Images of the ambush flashed in my mind. Planes flying overhead. Explosions and screams and gunshots. A burning soldier. I tried to remember what happened after the attack to get me here now and found that I couldn't. Everything seemed fuzzy in my mind. Even the things I could remember, I questioned their validity.

I stood on the side of the road for a while, simply processing. I was terrified. The fear of isolation, of having nothing and no one, was immensely troubling. There was nothing I had ever feared more than being alone and having to fend for myself, completely reliant on nothing but my own knowledge of the nature around me.

By some cruel act of irony, as if maybe somewhere some higher being had felt my fears, I heard the sound of engines in the distance. I turned to see the headlights of trucks headed my way from down the road. From the moment I could hear the distant sound, I abandoned all hope that maybe they were allied troops who could help me. Having been assigned to drive trucks in my service to the war, I knew the look and sound of British trucks. These were not them.

The trucks were nearing. I had limited time to react. As the headlights grew closer and lit up the area around me, I could see that there was nowhere to hide. I could run away from the road into the shadows untouched by the light of the trucks, but then I risked being spotted in movement and shot down. I could drop into the grass off the side of the road and lay still so as not to draw attention, but I would be in plain sight if they were looking closely.

The headlights flashed over me. I had hesitated for too long. Now I didn't stand a chance.

"Halt!" a German voice commanded. I was frozen. The line of trucks reeled to a stop, headed at the front by an officer vehicle.

"Hände in die Luft!" the same voice shouted. I didn't move, and they shouted again. Hearing the phrase repeated, I understood. Fearfully, I raised my hands above my head. Not like I was armed, anyways.

A German commander stepped out of the vehicle and approached me, looking me over in the headlights. As he got closer, he squinted at me, and I caught the brief look of surprise that flashed in his eyes upon viewing my facial features. "A woman in this war zone?" I imagined him to be thinking. I trembled under the officer's scrutiny.

He said something completely unintelligible to my knowledge to the other officers, and then another man brought something out to him from the car. Something metallic glinted in the light. A gun, I figured. They would just shoot me and move on. The second man passed the object into the hands of the first, who turned to bark an order at me. I was convinced it was the end until he reached up and grabbed my wrists from above my head, cuffing my hands behind my back and pushing me towards the car.