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The Final Attack
There we were, in the middle of a battlefield with craters from artillery. I was flanked by Steven who was making quick time as we charged. But as we charged I remembered what they had said “First to the battle, first to the beast, destiny waiting, no retreat.” I remembered they meant that to inspire us and it did exactly that as we made our way up through the trenches a few days ago. Everyone in the platoon was ready to die to make sure our enemy fails to hold their ground as once this trench is cleared we could move to the open ground for guerrilla warfare-at which we excelled at-, but that wasn't the point. The point was that we would take their final fortifications, then guerrilla warfare. To say the platoon wasn’t excited was an understatement (I knew they wouldn’t let the fact they would die get inside their head as we had long managed to laugh in the face of death). Fate was one way we could win so we fought and sacrificed to make sure that fate was on our side. Their army would go into disrepair so we could walk right through them with tanks as battering rams to free their prisoners from the prison camps that they had set up (we found a small and not well built one earlier last year). They mostly focused on keeping the prisoners trapped and terrified of them, but that didn’t mean there were a few that revolted and some even managed to escape fairly easily. We knew they would trigger bombs hidden in their trenches as another platoon found out the hard way leaving only a few alive so we took the survivors in to make sure they got through the loss of their platoon. Instead of feeling shell shocked and survivors guilt they were ready to join us and get revenge by destroying their reign of terror. I was shook out of my thoughts as Steven tackled me so I could avoid a mortar shell coming right towards me. Luckily we weren’t injured but I told Steven a quick thanks for watching my back while I was lost in thought. He told me to tell him what I was thinking of later. Unfortunately I didn’t know that I wouldn’t see him for another six years after this battle. We went through the enemy trenches with another soldier named Karl. Karl was the youngest in the platoon and I was a kind of role model for Karl as I was the unofficial leader of our platoon (we were also the most successful). As we moved sneakily through the trenches we had gotten to a war room we were looking for. You see we needed some intel so we got our enemy’s enemy’s spies to get us some intel as we couldn’t afford spies because we needed the man power in our ranks and there was also the fact that we were surrounded by three fronts with the ocean to our back. Thankfully we were top dog on the naval front. We also used exiled (not really) pilots from nations that our enemy conquered, it was surprisingly easy to defend from air raids but sometimes a few bombers got through our defences. One of the times a bomber got through our defences a few fighters were trying to shoot it down when it decided to drop the bombs on a town instead of its original target. My mother and father had been in the building that the bombs fell on, both had fallen. I was startled out of my thoughts by Karl placing a hand on my shoulder after he saw the look on my face (the whole platoon knew of what happened and decided that I was to have at least one of my more trustworthy friends be with me while on a mission as they were afraid that I would get myself killed while in my thoughts. I would be lying when I said I was thankful to them for doing that as I would do the same. We had found the documents and I told them to get to the extraction point where the documents would be brought to command. I also realized that I would need to attend the next meeting with the other unofficial leaders of platoons to discuss how we would fight the enemy on a front that we knew exactly how to fight in as most of us had lived here for generations. I shook myself out of my thoughts as I looked at our enemy's war room. It had a nice wooden frame on the inside but I knew that on the outside it looked like a normal concert bunker while the inside had a large mahogany table in the middle with the same mahogany chairs with red fur cushions and leather arm rests. I knew that these would be looked upon like spoils of war and be sent back to command to be put in the new war room that they were designing for longer meetings. But what caught my interest was the file label in my name hidden from view that only someone looking for imperfections would notice. I didn’t know how Steven and Karl didn’t notice if we weren’t told where to look for the documents. I walked over and pulled out the file and opened it up. Apparently they thought I was an old traitor helping the enemy (us) and that's the reason why my platoon was so successful but I had always put it down as luck and fate. I mean I knew their style of fighting as my father was that very traitor they were talking about but they believed I was the traitor, not related to the traitor like we would suspect. I took the file and hid it in a small waterproof pack I had found a few days ago and went out back into the now empty trenches as our platoon had cleared it out. As I walked with the pack slung over my shoulder to the extraction point to deliver the file to command with a note stating that the person they thought I was was my father, who was now dead due to a rogue enemy bomber that was taken down shortly after. I saw Steven and Karl talking by the truck that the documents were going on (with an escort of course). As I approached them I got a feeling that was being watched by something but ignored it and headed over. Karl was the first to see the pack and asked about it and I told him it was a file I think command would like to know now rather than later and he looked at me funny but was distracted by a medic as one was going to everyone in the platoon. The medic gave Karl and Steven a tiny reflex and mental rundown. The medic told me a group of four other soldiers were looking for me to go search the small forest. It would be a quick forty-five minute search and I told them I would be there in a few minutes. I gave the pack to the trucker and told him to deliver it with the documents and he nodded. I went to the group that wanted to see me and we headed into the forest. It came at us so fast I could barely react. First three soldiers got hit with tranquilizer darts while me and another guy managed to get behind cover before a machine gun fired at us hitting the guy in the leg and I knew that the rest of the platoon heard that and would be here in a few moments. One of the enemies appeared behind me and I fired my secondary a few times and hit him in the chest. Another guy I didn’t see hit me in the back of the head with the but of his rifle almost knocking me out but unable to fight back effectively and they could easily kill me if they wanted to but didn’t as they dragged me away with the guy with a machine gun delivering covering fire for them as the rest of my platoon started arriving. I was hit in the back of the head again knocking me out but not before hearing a flare being fired. It was most likely a purple flare signaling me being captured. And then all I saw was black with the sounds of a machine gun firing at my platoon (which I saw the platoon as if they were my own kids, and I knew they saw me as a father figure). And so started what many had called when they were captured. Hell.