Can You Hear Them Calling

Chapter III

3:47 am

"WIRF DIE GRANATE!"

"In deckung gehen" 

"Bleiben sie dran!"

"Bleiben sie dran!"

"Bleiben sie dran!"

Quickly I opened my eyes, vision---a blur but slowly clearing up. Everything up to this point was hell, suddenly vomit came out as I took off my goggles. Everything wasn't just hell, it was entirely chaotic in every single way---slowly turning, absorbing, doubting, disbelief. 

My gun was nowhere to be seen and even my flares, I must've lost it somehow, I wonder even my whereabouts. Nothing but my clothes were left, not a single gear could be seen through this mad scene. 

Granade flew from left to right and from right to left. Frags of different kinds, a much older version compared to what was now. warplanes fell from the sky embedding a nazi insignia on both wings as the other an American sigil. 

My eyes scattered around as if I was a kid lost in a supermarket, I trembled, and I weakened losing all my sense of sanity while gunshots and massive explosions colored in the background.  "CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!"

I was drowning in the sound of war, I got deeper---touching, feeling, and almost liking, the breathless bottom of entirety. Someone grabbed me by the shoulder---someone pulled me up, depriving me of the discovery beneath it all. "CAPTAIN! CAPTAIN!" A firm grip continues to clasp on my shoulder, "Schneider? w..where are we?"

He carried my arm on one shoulder and went behind one of the sandbags to take cover from the mayhem that was rampaging through this wicked place. "I..I don't know. Reins and Xiao...where are they?"

 We exchanged glances as the heavy gunfire that reverberated across the battlefield filled our earholes making us scream at each other while Molotovs had set the dazzling flames dancing through the streets, houses, and even on the barricades. 

"I haven't seen them yet. We need to know where we are. I've tried contacting command before we got here---but the radio's dead and so is the signal." This makes our earpiece useless too.

Suddenly a squad of soldiers in grey uniform and red cross insignia's strapped in their arms---pointed rifles at us, they started talking in German tongue. "HANDE HOCH! HANDE HOCH!" One of the soldiers yelled, I got lost in the scene, they were---fueled by anger, sweat dripping from their foreheads, hand quivering, and voice shaking, but underneath those facades were fear,  fear from their own nation---not of the enemies. Suddenly just about everything was going bad Schneider raised his brow and yelled back standing proud and tall as gunfire still painted the background. 

"Ich bin Leutnant Schneider, dieser Amerikaner ist in sehr wertvolles gut." He dictated as if he knew each and every one of them. The German soldiers now bowed in shame and replied back an apology to Schneider as they saluted then went off towards the front line. 

"What the hell did you just say back there?" Schneider replied with a smirk then offered his hand to me who was laying back on a sandbag for a while now. "Hurry up before my luck runs out Cap."

The chaotic background now sank in entirely. Houses burning, streets set aflame, tanks destroyed and left scattered in the streets, planes shooting each other down from the sky, soldiers scattered, and gunfire run ablaze across the dark battlefield for the night was dark and smoke thickens as gunfire went on. But what caught both of our attention was the massive Eifel tower of Paris, it was polluted in a nazi banner.